From School Library Journal
Grade 6-8?Jack, 13, keeps a diary of his family's year in Barbados, the next stop after Florida?chronicled in Heads or Tails (Farrar, 1994). These entries are his adventures, observations, sketches, and perceptions of this mid-1960s Caribbean environment where pubescence, family disputes, and a fire all combine for a compelling read. Each episode stands on its own, but taken together they create a tropical world that is at once different and universal. Gantos covers pretty much all the bases: death, love, disease, and cock-fighting. Readers may not always like his quasi-autobiographical characters, but they're not likely to forget them anytime soon. In particular, Jack's dad can be a hero when he saves a drowning couple, but more often he's a mean-spirited bully who won't tolerate failure in his son. There's an edge here noted by events as mild as chicken beheadings or as graphic as the discovery of the decomposing body of a missing kid. Throw in humiliation (his true love disdains his "immaturity"), macabre hilarity (Jack's mom is convinced that her errant night shot has nailed a bystander), and surrealism (the drive-in movie screen catches fire while Paul Newman's Luke vandalizes parking meters), and you've got a rich paradise tempered by the wonderings of a confused adolescent.?John Sigwald, Unger Memorial Library, Plainview, TX
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Gr. 5^-8. In this follow-up to
Heads or Tails (1994), Jack finds plenty of new material for his journal when his family moves to the Caribbean. Populated with some eccentric island folk as well as the powerful personalities that make up Jack's family, the eight stories here convey with sharp humor Jack's uncomfortable yet exhilarating early adolescence. Jack's father creates much of the summer's difficulties, in one story, deciding that each family member must conquer a fear and in another, battling with Jack for masculine power. Laugh-out-loud moments punctuate the book, but serious thoughts also force their way in, as when Jack realizes that the money he is lending to his father's sleazy friend is sponsoring cruel cockfighting. Although the book ends on a somber note, readers will still anxiously await the next installment in Jack's life.
Susan Dove Lempke
