Customer Reviews

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!

5 star:		(14)
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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
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This book starts out as being the story of Tucker Woolf, self-apointed expert on libraries, and cronicler of strange existences. But it soon turns out that it is actually the story of four young teenagers, and, on a broader scale, their parents and their entire society.
Tucker has to deal with having a faher who cares too much about apearances, and drills Tucker into only revealing parts of the truth when dealing with strangers. Tucker is feels somewhat out of place wherever he is, and when he finds a stray cat he imediately bonds with it. When his dad turns out to be allergic, he has to give the cat away. It is this cat who, directly and inderectly, brings him into contact with the other characters. It is adopted by Dinky Hocker, a tragically overweight girl, whose parents completely ignore their daughters problems, in favour of helping drug-addicts and othe worthy causes. Her cousin Natalie, and a boy who shares Dinkys rather enormous problem, together form the core of the story.

The book is funny, the characters quirky and the situations somwhat absurd, but the real fascination of this book comes from seeing how the parents of these children forget them in favour of either their own problems or the problems of strangers. The thing that struck me most is that Dinkys charity-mom is actually one of the most selfish people in the world. I would recomend this book to anyone, even though it is technically a YA-novel. Its a good read, all the same.

Like all great young adult literature, Kerr undermines our expectations throughout. Full of twists, complications and contradictions that make it one of the most compelling books I've ever read. In the league of the I Am The Cheese or Catcher in the Rye.

This book is great! It should be required reading for all children who are about to become teen-agers, and for all parents whose children are about to become teen-agers.

This book is not exactly a "little known" YA book. Rather, it was one of the best known of rhe 70s "teen problem novel" genre and was even made into an Afterschool Special or similar short film at some point. I read the book when I was about 12 and read a number of other M.E. Kerr books as well. "Dinky Hocker" has a pretty good idea for a story but for some reason when I was a kid it didn't totally move me or grab me like some other teen books.

The main character of the book, Tucker, meets Dinky Hocker when she adopts his cat. Dinky is a teenage girl with a bad attitude and a serious weight problem that the book makes clear is caused by compulsive overeating - Dinky likes to spend her days on the couch chowing on mountains of junk food while she watches TV. (The book was written some years before kids had the I-net or home video games so TV was pretty much the only time-waster available.) Tucker doesn't really like Dinky that much, but while visiting her he meets and falls in love with her cousin Natalia Line, who is beautiful, suffers from mental illness and talks in rhymes when she's stressed. Natalia is staying with Dinky's family, and Dinky's mother totally overprotects her while ignoring Dinky or treating her like a baby. Dinky's mother spends most of her time working for charities. including one that provides what would now be called "new age" therapy to recovering shooters of smack (i.e. heroin addicts - heroin being the big bad drug du jour when the book was written; nowadays it would be meth or oxycontin).

In order to spend more time alone with Natalia, Tucker gets Dinky a date with his friend P. John who also has a major eating-induced weight problem, but apart from that has some interesting (to say the least) political views, tons of self-confidence and isn't afraid to stand up to adults including Dinky's parents. Dinky and P. John end up really hitting it off and start spending lots of time together, even going on a diet together. However, when the inevitable showdown comes between P. John and Dinky's parents, Dinky returns to her fat, glum self. Will she stay that way? Will Dinky's mother ever learn to pay attention to her and treat her like an adult? Will Tucker ever get a chance to build a real relationship with Natalia? I won't give away the end, except to say (as some of the book ads and jackets have stated over the years) that Dinky does not really shoot any smack. I point that out because honestly when I first picked up the book as a kid I was expecting a drug abuse book, sort of like "Go Ask Alice" and this turned out to be anything but.

This book is a fast and comical read and it does portray a very real problem - that of parents who are so caught up in their own self-importance that they don't take time to notice their kids and given them what they need. The characters are funny, but they verge on caricatures and the whole book seems more like a Hollywood comedy movie script than real people having real emotions. As a kid I always wondered about Natalia's "mental illness" as she doesn't seem particularly sick, perhaps just shy or a little depressed, and I thought maybe the Hockers were exaggerating how "ill" she was so they could get a big charge out of "helping" her like they did the drug addicts. As an adult, I feel like M.E. Kerr romanticized mental illness, as even when Natalia is upset and acting "mental" it's mild and attractive - she talks in rhyme rather than screaming, injuring herself, or having any number of less poetic symptoms. P. John is a very interesting and well-drawn character but his political views are pretty extreme and it's hard to tell whether he really takes his politics that seriously or is just out to shock adults. Most disturbing to me as an adult is the fact that no one except P. John seems to be able to get past Dinky's weight and appreciate her as a person, and even P. John pressures her to go on a diet with him. I know that a lot of society and many if not most teenagers really frown on obesity, and that it's healthier to eat right and exercise, but I would have felt more comfortable with the story if P. John had been a normal sized guy who was able to look past Dinky's fat and see she was a cool person underneath, rather than a fat guy who insisted that Dinky join him on a diet. It seems like Dinky has just replaced one set of authorities, her parents, with another authority, P. John, simply because he pays more attention to her. I would have liked to see her tell both her parents and P. John off and just go be her own person regardless of whether she lost weight or not, or whether a guy was paying attention to her or not.

The charactr of Tucker also got on my nerves because he's presented as the most "normal" character in the book. He doesn't have a mental problem or a weight problem, nor does he have parents who are as dysfunctional as the Hockers (although the book suggests that his strained relationship with his dad might be something he has in common with Dinky initially). The problem with Tucker is that, while he has some nice moments with Natalia, most of the time he's pretty boring compared to all the other way-out characters in the book. It's kind of creepy how he'll be friendly with Dinky, not because he really seems to care about her, but just as a way of getting to her much prettier cousin. He also seems so constantly insecure, worrying that he's going to mess things up with Natalia somehow, hat he got on my nerves before I finished the book.

I read this book when I was in junior high school. That was over 30 years ago and I still remember it and how well I could relate to the struggles of teen life. If you are a teenager considering this book or a parent considering buying it for your child, do not hesitate. After all, though I am a pretty smart and well educated person, this is the only book (I'm serious here) that left a lasting impression on me from the K-12 years. It's gotta be special.

this is a very charming tale of this mean girl who adopts this boys cat when his dad develops an allergy.he misses the cat so much he goes over to thier house all the time.one day dinky hockers[WHAT A NAME!]cousin same over and the boy and her fall in love.her name is natalia line.shes a schizophrennic who rhymes all her sentences and words when under stress.its a wonderful story that has a "to kill a mockingbird" like charm to it.not the bad stuff but the parts where the kids are just bein g kids.i fell in love with this story right away.it will always have a place in my heart.

Wow. I was really impressed by the intelligence and actuality of these characters. I love the conversation that occurs between Tucker and Natailia (did I spell that right?) about relationships, or the lack of... Brilliantly played out. Bravo!

Dinky Hocker is a great book. I really enjoyed it because it related to some situations kids could experience in their life. I also found this book humorous because of some remarks Dinky made. It was a great, snazzy, jazzy, hip, smooth, kicking, hip to the beat book.

This story is easily enjoyable for both adults and adolescents. It's an easy read with a lot of humor and meaning squeezed into Kerr's concise words.

This is a good book with real life characters and real problems that teenagers really go through. This is a good book to leave at the side of your bed to read at night. For those of you who plan on doing a report on this book, this isn't the best book to do a report because the main conflict isn't the greatest thing to do and it's not that exciting.(Believe me i'm doing a project on it now)