The Adventures of Blue Avenger [Hardcover]

Norma Howe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2000

On his sixteenth birthday, David Schumacher changes his name to Blue Avenger. . .

And things start to happen. Within twenty-four hours, David becomes a national hero, starts dating an extraordinary girl named Omaha Nebraska Brown, and bakes an imperfect pie. And that's not all. A tiny sow bug is injured by a lawn mower, some killer bees make their home at San Pablo High School, and there is some activity in the earth's crust.

The connection?

No one knows for certain.

At first, it seems that David's own free will is guiding his momentous decision. But maybe it's something else. Maybe it's the inevitable result of everything that has ever happened to him since his miraculous birth.

To find out more about life and death, romance, gun control, lemon meringue pie, and world peace, you'll have to read this book. The decision is yours.

Or is it? 2001 ALA Popular Paperback for YAs

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Irony, silliness, and the deepest questions of the human soul blend together delightfully in this funny, original novel by Norma Howe. The day David Schumacher turns 16, he decides to ease the pain of his father's death by legally changing his name to "Blue Avenger," after a comic book hero he created when he was 13. Armed with his new nom de plume, David hopes to abolish handguns, win the love of Omaha Nebraska Brown (the new girl at school), and create the first guaranteed weepless lemon meringue pie. He also wouldn't mind discovering the answer to the mystery of all mysteries: "Are we truly the masters of our fate or merely actors on a stage, playing our parts in a predetermined cosmic drama over which we have no control?" Through a crazy course of coincidences (or perhaps predestined circumstances) Blue Avenger ends up accomplishing almost all of the monumental tasks he has set for himself. Yet he never quite answers that question of free will, a conundrum that Howe leaves the reader to wrestle with until the very last page. The text is peppered with "facts," such as the detailed death of a particular sow bug and the prediction of an earthquake in a certain California subdivision, which seemingly have no bearing on the story. But Howe ties all of these factoids and statistics together in the finale with a flourish reminiscent of Louis Sachar's Newbery award-winning Holes. Teens who enjoyed the mental jigsaw puzzles in Sachar's excellent novel will no doubt also dig The Adventures of Blue Avenger. (Ages 12 to 15) --Jennifer Hubert --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

David Bruce Schumacher has been drawing comic books featuring a superhero for three years, but on his 16th birthday he decides that it's high time that someone actually do something about the world's problems. Accordingly, he dons his late father's fishing vest, puts a towel on his head, ? la Lawrence of Arabia, and renames himself Blue Avenger after his creation ("The" is a lousy first name, he decides). Almost instantly the skinny redhead becomes a hero, first by saving the high school principal from killer bees, then by secretly arranging treatment for an acne-ravaged friend and ultimately effecting an end to handgun violence in Oakland, Calif.Amaybe even the entire U.S. In this canny and sophisticated fable, Howe (The Game of Life) interpolates her loopy plot with serious discussions of philosophy, teen romance, a recipe for "weepless" lemon meringue pie and finely honed characterizations. Especially endearing are the hero and Omaha Nebraska Brown, the feisty gal he's drawn to by his own free willAor is it determinism? Throughout, Howe edgily challenges the reader to decide whether the events related therein (allegedly with the help of an extraterrestrial) are due to chance or fate. The story's teasingly open ending will inspire delighted conjecture. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover
• Publisher: Perfection Learning (August 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0756900999
• ISBN-13: 978-0756900991
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,026,612 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful, inventive book for young teens, June 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Adventures of Blue Avenger (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful book, which is fairly well described by the reviews above. It is a kind of real-life fantasy, where the main character adopts a comic-book superhero persona and immediately starts living a comic-book superhero type existence, where he is instantly popular at school and nothing serious goes wrong. (In some ways, this book is like a teen version of Laurie Colwin's Happy All the Time. There is no traditional conflict, not among peers, not between kids and parents or teachers or society. There are tragedies, but they are all in the past.) The themes are mature: sexuality (a very sweet version of it), personal responsibility, the ways in which people advance themselves at a cost to others. The author is very ambitious, and not all of what she tries works, but a great deal does. One issue: my wife mistakenly bought this for our 10-year-old son, for whom it is clearly inappropriate. It is not so clear what group of kids should read it. Kids old enough to appreciate a condom-buying scene (a high point in the book that is clearly, if coyly, divorced from the conventional reasons for buying condoms) and smart enough to like the frequent philosophical discussions and ironic authorial intrusions will generally have moved beyond Young Adult fiction. They may resent the undercurrent of goody-goody preachiness (the protagonists predictably and enthusiastically opt for chastity; there is a lot of anti-vulgarity propaganda) and the odd reticence that produces a great deal of very unspecific talk about sex ("He pondered the difference between love and lust." "Their hormones were raging.") Basically, this is a book that has to fit into a narrow window of opportunity in which kids have enough interest and information to care about the themes but will find the coyness comforting. Also, although it is not a "girls' book" per se, girls will probably like it a lot more than boys - it is really a girls' fantasy about the perfect boyfriend.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great book that you _really_ can't put down!, July 1, 1999

By 

Lynn Weatherby - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Adventures of Blue Avenger (Hardcover)

The Adventures of Blue Avenger is overall a very good read. It starts off fairly intriguing, and the plot continues to develope chapter after chapter. This is not a book where you will skip parts, as I... er... well, tend to do.

This novel has great character development. The main characters are lively, intelligent, and people who you'd like to be friends with. An interesting thing about this book is how the social life of Blue (the main character) is portrayed. It seems as if there really isn't any teenage nastiness, or at least not much of it. I think this makes it better than the average book, even though it may not be that realistic. It's refreshing to not read about teen social problems every single page.

Another great thing about this book is the way it works through philosophical questions, mainly the ever-lasting predestination versus free will question. The author brings the questions up throughout the story just enough to keep it largely interesting, but not overkill.

I would say that this book is more appropriate for ages 12 and up. Some of the subjects in it are not something you'd want an eight year-old to read, despite the cover.

All in all, I would recomend it to anyone who is looking for great summer reading. I know that sounds really vague, but it's the truth. I was skeptical when it arrived, but as soon as I started reading it, I was hooked!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Who would have thought..., November 25, 2000

By 

arkm (Kendall Park, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Adventures of Blue Avenger (Paperback)

that a book on such a serious topic could be so much fun to read? If someone had come up to me and asked "Would you like to read a book about free will?", I probably would have just said "No way." But Blue Avenger turned out to be one of the funniest things I've read in a while. It all starts on his 16th birthday, when David Schumacher decides to change his name to Blue Avenger after a character he created. In doing so he becomes a unique sort of superhero, simply solving everyday problems, like finding the perfect lemon meringue pie recipe. (I tried it, and it really honestly doesn't weep.)There's plenty of humor along the way, as in the memorable condom-buying scene and classroom discussion. There's a romantic side, thanks to his close friend Omaha Nebraska Brown. There are small seemingly meaningless moments that come back in the end, somewhat like Harry Potter. And of course, there's the free will issue- it really makes you think without taking over the story or getting boring and technical. I knew very little about free will before reading this, but now I can honestly say I have an opinion on it.

Is it realistic? Not really. But will it make you think and laugh out loud? You bet. And that's the whole point anyway.