Making Up Megaboy [Hardcover]

DK Publishing (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up

Most days he is Robbie Jones of Santa Rosita, California. "Quiet, something of a loner," say his classmates at Kennedy Middle School. "He liked to draw..." volunteers his friend Ruben. "Me and him made up stories all the time about a superhero called Megaboy." But one day, Robbie takes a .44 from his father's sock drawer, climbs on the new bike he's been given for his thirteenth birthday, pedals a few blocks to Main Street, and shoots an elderly Korean shopkeeper. Within hours, Jae Lin Koh is dead. This extraordinary book, an album of inquiry as terse and visually arresting as any TV news brief, sets out the particulars of Robbie's actions and arrest later that day. The boy, meek and shivering, confesses buy does not explain. Other people try: his parents, teachers, the cops, psychologists, the girl Robbie "liked." The voices of America, beyond Megaboy's help. Together, they will have young adults listening--and talking.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This book asks readers to piece together their own interpretation of the events presented here, and it will hold them breathless long past the last page: On his 13th birthday, with his father's gun, Robbie Jones shot Jae Koh, who had, for eight months, operated the Main Street Liquor Store in Santa Rosita, Calif. These are the facts as revealed by Robbie's mother, Louise Jones, and a Channel Two Newsroom reporter in the first two spreads of this deceptively slender volume. Eighteen people in all give their points of view concerning the event; no one has answers?not Robbie's mother, father, teacher, principal, preacher or even his best friend. Instead, readers experience the first-person accounts as they would a series of television or newspaper interviews; each character has a distinctive voice, reflected typographically in a unique font and coupled with Roeckelein's dramatic visuals. In one spread, Louise Jones says of her son, "When he was little, I would read him Bible stories and fairy tales and make him pancakes in shapes like bears and elephants. It was easier to make him happy then"; opposite are photos of a happy baby boy with his teddy bear, Robbie as a boy of perhaps five, holding a turtle, and other snapshots of an older, more pensive boy?could those hold clues? Or perhaps the comic-strip adventures of a mythical Megaboy that Robbie created are the key. Readers will find themselves poring over the pages, looking for some glimmer of a foreshadowing of this dark event. But perhaps the greatest shadow lurking here is that no one really knew this child. Ages 11-up.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-8?Walter's very brief book is as stark and shocking as today's newspaper headlines. It tells the disturbing story of how a Los Angeles suburb is rocked by the seemingly random shooting of an elderly Korean liquor-store owner by a quiet loner, Robbie Jones, on his 13th birthday. The tale is told, and the character of Robbie developed, through a multitude of voices as the boy's parents, teacher, best friend, schoolmates, principal, minister, attorney, and corrections officer join with a reporter and the new widow to offer glimpses into and opinions about this all-too-topical tragedy. Robbie speaks only through a short story he has written about a character, Megaboy, who becomes a sort of metaphor for the person Robbie might like to be. The story poignantly reveals his sense of not fitting in. Megaboy is a Popeye-like superhero who eats spice-covered chips that make him incredibly strong and who helps children. The high-tech graphics and layout make the book as current as its content. Roeckelein has used a computer to combine, color, and scan her own photographs to create images. Type fonts vary to match the characters and their expressions. Touching on many contemporary issues, including racism, ageism, and violence (indeed, the gun nearly takes on the dimension of a character), this is a memorable and powerful book. Its open-endedness and subject matter make it a great discussion starter or a good choice for reader's theater. The brevity of the text and abundance of graphics make it appropriate for reluctant readers as well.?Connie Tyrrell Burns, Mahoney Middle School, South Portland, ME
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Hardcover: 64 pages
• Publisher: DK CHILDREN; 1st edition (March 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789424886
• ISBN-13: 978-0789424884
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,959,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, true-to-life, March 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Making Up Megaboy (Hardcover)

A short book that will take YA readers less than an hour to read but will give them food for thought for days to come. I've used it with an 8th. grade class with very positive results. The students saw the shallowness of the young girl as well as the prejudices against certain ethnic groups and young people. The book is realistic in that it doesn't answer the question of "why?" This is a terrific book to use to stimulate discussion of several topics: timeliness/reality, graphics, characterization, style of writing.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The end. Fin. Finito. Kaputski., July 20, 2005

By 

E. R. Bird "Ramseelbird" (Manhattan, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Making Up Megaboy (Paperback)

If there's one thing that children (and childlike adults) hate, it's books with inconclusive endings. If you're reading a story and you meet a sympathetic character who commits an atrocious crime, you undoubtedly want to know why that crime was committed. The last thing you're going to want is to reach the end of the story and find yourself staring at the final page without any more idea why such-n-such happened as you did when you first began. It's a remarkably gutsy move on the part of an author to create a book like, "Making Up Megaboy". Admittedly, author Virginia Walters and illustrator Katrina Roeckelein have written a book that was a better idea in theory than it winded up being in practice. Still, they've done their best and the story certainly catches the eye and will make for plenty of lively discussions of what the true tale really is.

No one knows why Robbie Jones shot the old Korean man in the liquor store. Robbie was a thirteen-year-old kid with few friends and an active fantasy life. He and his best friend Ruben would draw comic strips of a character named "Megaboy". Robbie had a crush on a girl named Tara in school, but his connection to Mr. Koh (the deceased) was sketchy at best. Now however he's a thirteen-year-old with murder on his head and evidence all around him. Why he did it, no one knows. But everyone has an idea. And everyone's talking.

I guess the real danger of this book is that it sort of gives the impression that if a kid is a loner who keeps to his or her own self and likes art, they're probably a danger. The book could even be interpreted to mean something along the lines of those-who-do-not-conform-to-society-will-ultimately-destroy-it. Sure Robbie seems like a nice kid, but since we never know why exactly he killed Mr. Koh he's given a bit of distance from the reader. There's also the fact that the story's essentially unbelievable. I mean, people just don't go about killing other people for no good reason. It's not a day-to-day reaction. Robbie's crime is so frustrating to readers partly because it's so senseless. And not senseless in the sense that it's a waste of a young life. Senseless because from what we know of Robbie (and from the scant 64 some pages here, that ain't much) he's not the type that would do this crime. Also, if a thirteen-year-old kills someone, goes to jail, and refuses to talk about it and seems to be in shock.... Well what better basis for an insanity plea could you want?

I'm talking about all the problems with the book, but there are good things in it as well. The original format taking all sides and showing the crime after the fact is good. Ditto the characters you get to know. Placing much of her skill in throwaway lines, Walter enables characters like Tara (the girl Robbie had a crush on) to deliver nasty cutting thoughts on things like selling a picture Robbie once gave her for a lot of money now that he's infamous.

In the end, however, "Making Up Megaboy" doesn't know what it wants to be. Obviously this book is trying, and not quite succeeding, to be akin to Walter Dean Myers', "Monster". Of the two, "Monster" is a far stronger book. "Megaboy" is just too short to make up for its one-of-a-kind ending. It's certainly possible to write a book in which a crime remains a mystery up and until the end. But to do so the author needs to immerse the reader fully in that criminal's head. We never see anything that Robbie's actually thinking, with the possible exception of a "Megaboy" script thrown in at the end of the tale. We don't know how Robbie felt about his parents or his friends or his school. Just a single glimpse into his head would've salvaged a promising idea. Walter fails in this respect. I still think that "Making Up Megaboy" has its uses in the classroom. Just don't expect it to be a great big hit outside of required reading circles.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for pre-teens and their parents, September 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Making Up Megaboy (Hardcover)

With news this morning of the conviction of yet another teenaged murderer, I am sadly reminded, once again, just how timely and poignant Virginia Walter's Making Up Megaboy is. Certainly this is a dark book; but these are dark times when kids feel the need to act out their anger and insecurities by killing others. What this book tells us, through its multiple points of view, is that we are all responsible for helping today's youth reach their maximum potential. As a librarian who has worked with young adults for many years and as the aunt of four adolescents, I feel Making Up Megaboy should be read and discussed by all pre-teens and their parents.