What Parents Should Know
There's an edge to this humorous, moving, and sometimes
violent story that children really respond to. Parents may want
to talk to their children about the unfairness of Stanley's
life, and the cold-hearted viciousness of some of the
characters.
Common Sense Media Review
Sometimes there's a strange beauty in complexity, the
bringing of order out of chaos. Sachar's story jumps around in
time and place as he weaves his intricate tapestry of
intersecting stories. An old Egyptian wise woman living in
Latvia whose curse resounds down the generations, a schoolmarm
in the American West, whose love for a black man destroys both
their lives, a boy abandoned by his mother at a playground, a
girl who is consumed with anger and greed as she watches the
downfall of her family -- when all these disparate stories
finally come ringing into their places, it's like hearing the
perfect orchestral chord.
Sachar pulls together this complicated story with
unusual characters, dark humor, inventive plotting (including
some surprising twists), and some Dickensian coincidences. The
harshness of the situation is mitigated by the multi-faceted
mystery and by the strangely lighthearted way the author tells
the story. At the end the author deliberately leaves a few
holes in the plot for the reader to fill in. Sachar has a
bizarre imagination, and in this vivid, many-layered book he
puts it to its most compelling use yet.
From the book:
She stepped toward him and struck him across the face.
Mr. Sir stared at her. He had three long red marks
slanting across the left side of his face. Stanley didn't know
if the redness was caused by her nail polish or his blood.
It took a moment for the venom to sink in. Suddenly, Mr.
Sir screamed and clutched his face with both hands. He let
himself fall over, rolling off the hearth and onto the rug.
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