Customer Reviews

The Boy Who Could Make Himself Disappear

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Roger Baxter is alone. He lives with his insensitive mother in New York and has little contact with his Hollywood father. Roger has a problem with his "r's". He cannot say them. He goes to a speech therapist, but he will not be cured by her. His only hope is the man who dates the penthouse beauty in his building. Roger goes through the pain of being a forgotten child, while befriending a girl who cannot walk without her canes, and the wonderful woman he grows to love in the penthouse. He learns how difficult it can be to fight for life and love by a quiet Frenchman who's struggles Roger can identify with. I cry when I read this. Every time.

I first read this book thirty years ago and literally thousands of books later I still vividly remember the impact it made on me. I think I started crying about page fifty and didn't stop until the end. The subject matter, child abuse and willful neglect, is ugly, but the telling is done with such subtlety and delicacy that to this day this book still sits on my shelf. I've recommended it to quite a few young teens who I knew were strong enough to take it and virtually all of them loved the book. Even the fact that the ending is hopeful rather than happy doesn't put them off. Kids are realists more than we think and I believe they appreciate the author not taking the nicer and therefore easier way out with this work. They can get all the cute and sweet stuff they want from Disney, Kin Platt wrote about the real world where happily ever after doesn't always happen. Sometimes it's good to remember that.

I first read this book when I was about 12 years old. It is an inspirational story of a kid who was dealt a bad hand in life. His parents are horrible, he has an embarrassing speech problem, and his life circumstances contribute to the demise of his mental stability. The wonderful thing about this book is the heroes he encounters. The friend who can't walk, the beautiful woman who lives in the penthouse, and most importantly the speech therapist who stands up to the terrible mother and really puts her in her place. The speech therapist's role in this story inspired me to take up that career when I became an adult. I recommend this book to anyone over the age of twelve.

i must have read it 20 times from 6th grade through junior high school. yes, it is hard, and probably depressing, but it saved me. it was me. and finding someone like me in print helped so much

i loved this book when i was in 9th grade, i took it out of my high school library many times. i have always been attracted to sad stories; i guess i kind of collect them. this may be a depressing story but thats life. i love this book. i wish it were easier to get.

Not for anyone under 17? Nonsense. I read this when I was 10. No it's not Disney, thank God! It's a serious book about a serious subject. I could name a dozen other classics of the same bent that I read at about the same age. Don't even get me started on Pigman! Or I Am the Cheese! I was a healthy kid living in a healthy family, and I experienced healthy outrage and sadness at the way the main character in this book was treated. Somehow I managed to read it without having a nervous breakdown. People need to get a grip.

I first read The Boy Who Could Make Himself Disappear when I was a teenager living with a single mother who was experiencing a deep depressive episode. While she was not deliberately cruel or as self-absorbed as the character, Roger's, mother, she wasn't emotionally available. Reading this book (over and over) was strangely healing and empowering for me. It validated my sense of my reality, rather than the view my family was trying to foist off on me--the view that I was responsible for my mother rather than the other way around.

This book enabled me to see that my life was not normal and that I deserved better. Kin Platt nurtured my instinct for self preservation and kept hope alive in me. The many caring people in Roger's life who intervened on his behalf or showed him love let me know that there were good and decent people in the world. I was shown another model of how to be that counteracted the influence of my dysfunctional extended family. I also saw that one could extract one's self from such a family with no need for guilt.

To say this book shouldn't be read by those under 17, as an earlier review indicated, is to say that I shouldn't have had access to this book when I needed it most. I think it should definitely be available to every abused or neglected teenager and is a must-read for anyone wanting to expand their capacity for compassion and love. It's a classic!

I enjoyed reading the reviews about this book. I read this when I was a teen, and again as an adult - my education was in the field of Speech so I think this was a fantastic book about a child and the difficulties he has because of his speech problem and identity crisis. One can identify with his feeling alone, I think, because most kids will feel that at one time or another. The bond this child has to make to be himself is what keeps him.

Now, I was disheartened to read the reviews that say this is not for kids -- maybe a tween to teen book. Too often kids are sheltered from things and I would let my child read this so their eyes can open to the feelings of others - people that are "different." You can protect them all you want, but for kids, and Roger, the reality of life is there - deal with it. In this society, we need more compassion for children who speak, think and look different, this book embodies difference. All Roger wants is to be loved, isn't it? And that, my friends, is what any person wants in life.

A great book for your children and adults alike.

This book is far too heavy for anyone under the age of seventeen.

I heartily disliked this book as a child and as an adult. It is a very sad story, to say the least. Roger Baxter is the protagonist of this tale. At 12, he has a speech problem that precludes him from relating to peers. He is understandably embarrassed about his inability to pronounce "R" and rues having "Rs" in his name. Roger has a mother nobody would wish for and a disinterested father, who ultimately get divorced. At the opening of the story, Californian Roger has traveled across country to Manhattan with his wretched mother. Flashbacks are interspersed throughout the story and in each one, Roger relates yet another horror story of maternal abuse. At 6, he is verbally flayed and locked in his room because he was too scared to order a hamburger at the UCLA cafeteria; at 3, he remembers the mother's "mean mouth" when he injured his tongue chewing on a styptic pencil. In New York, he makes some friends, among them the cute Nemo Newman and a French citizen, Monsieur Roger Tunnel. Tunnel and a school speech teacher are the only adult characters one can like. They both take Roger under their wings and try to nurse him through the mental breakdown he suffers at the close of the book. Poor Roger is committed to Bellevue and his stupid mother won't even be bothered with him. All that vapid, vain thing wants to do is travel to Florida where she can get some sun and sees the institution as a place where Roger can be safely deposited. Roger's speech teacher rightfully cleans the mother's clock when she walks in on the mother haranguing the boy shortly after his discharge from Bellevue. She deftly punches Roger's mother in the jaw, which she richly deserved. Poor Roger is left in the limbo of mute mental illness. Roger Tunnell is a treat -- he actually cares about Roger.

Now that I've told you this story, do you really still want to read it? Read something else instead. Gently put, this is a downer.