Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"Returning to the setting for his 145th Street: Short Stories, the author juxtaposes a sketch of the 16-year-old narrator's home life with nuggets of wisdom delivered by the neighborhood barber with wit and tact," according to PW. Ages 10-up. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-Myers prefaces his new novel with an explanation of his belief that adult mentors can help teens choose positive paths in their lives. The book begins with a judge giving 16-year-old Jimmy the option of being assigned to a juvenile facility for six months for assaulting a classmate or to a community-mentoring program. Of course, he chooses the latter and begins his relationship with Duke Wilson, the owner of a neighborhood barbershop where he will work every day after school. Duke is an older man who, with several of his cronies, tries to give Jimmy and Kevin (another troubled youth) advice about the decisions and paths they will choose as they travel through life. This is imparted by using characters who visit the shop as good or bad examples of people who think independently, who take responsibility for their actions, who are on drugs, or who believe they can solve their own problems. Although the conversations provide valuable life lessons, they come across as didactic and preachy. Much more realistic are the one-on-one scenes between Jimmy and other characters, like his mother and, particularly, his contemporaries. The teen's perspective is the vehicle that carries the story and by book's end readers know he will make it while Kevin has more to learn. Marketed as a work of fiction, the book becomes transparent; as a handbook, it could touch many lives.-Joanne K. Cecere, Monroe-Woodbury High School, Central Valley, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Charged with assault and assigned to a community mentoring program, teenaged Jimmy works after school at DukeÆs Place, a Harlem barbershop. Duke and his cronies tell colorful stories that impart life lessons to the young man about achieving success, making the right choices about sex and drugs, and being a responsible adult. Though the book reads more like a lecture than a novel, in general it's goodhearted and thought provoking. From HORN BOOK Fall 2002, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In a self-help treatise in the guise of a novel, Myers's (Bad Boy, 2001, etc.) passion and concern for adolescent boys infuses the material and gives it a heartfelt urgency. He's eager to teach youngsters how to make the right decisions so that they can avoid the pitfalls of modern life and become productive members of society. With that aim in mind, he gives his readers three rules for achievement: "Find out what you mean by success . . . find out what work is needed to get there . . . go on and do the work." The story itself is slight: after being arrested for injuring a classmate in a schoolyard fight, an unexceptional child named Jimmy must work for an upright elder, a right-thinking street-corner philosophizer, and the owner of a local mecca-a barbershop in Harlem. Everyone who comes into Duke's barbershop relates a story of victimhood or success-fodder for discussion and a moral. At first, Jimmy finds Duke and his endless life lessons insufferable-and it must be said that the lack of dramatic tension and structure of personal story followed by analysis does grow tedious-but over time the man's genuine decency (and the rightness of his position) makes its mark. Finally, Jimmy sees firsthand how a poorly thought-out choice can have a catastrophic impact on a person's future, and begins to make better judgments in his own life. Although compositionally flawed, this has such important things to say to adolescent boys that it deserves a wide audience. (Fiction. 10-15)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by School Library Journal Review
Review by Horn Book Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
