Bucking the Sarge (Hardcover)

by Christopher Paul Curtis (Author) "Luther T. Farrell, you got to be more careful..." (more)
Key Phrases: channel twelve, science fair project, name escapes, Darnell Dixon, Little Chicago, Taco Bell (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Fifteen-year-old wannabe philosopher Luther T. Farrell knows a few things about life. He knows the Sarge (his rich, shrewd, slumlord mom) is tougher than nails and that he better not cross her. He knows his chances of using Chauncey, the ancient condom in his wallet, are slim to none. And, he knows that despite his goal to attend Harvard, he may end up stuck in Flint, Michigan, cleaning toilets in his mom's loathsome empire. Luther spends much of his time helping the Sarge run "Happy Neighbor Group Homes" around the city, including shaving and bathing elderly men and driving residents around with an illegal license. In spare moments he tries to win first place in the science fair at school and hang out with his best friend Sparky, all the while fantasizing mightily about his one true love, the beautiful Shayla.

Readers will be moved as Luther, a thoroughly decent if sometimes naive boy, rails against his mother's cold, ruthless notions of what it takes to get ahead in the world. Up-to-the-minute slang and pop culture references will resonate with teen readers, as will the funny, first-person narrative; crisp, often hilarious dialogue; and wonderfully vivid characters. Christopher Paul Curtis, winner of the Newbery Medal for Bud Not Buddy tells a warm, witty, heart wrenching story where the good guy gets his due. (Ages 12 and older) --Karin Snelson

From School Library Journal
Grade 8 Up–Luther's mother, "the Sarge," runs an empire of Flint, MI, slums and halfway houses, and has a loan-sharking business. At age 15, Luther manages one of her halfway houses, drives the residents around in a van with an illegal license, and readies the homes of evicted tenants for the Sarge's next desperate victims. In exchange, she puts his earnings in a college fund, threatens him into submission, and primes him to take over the business. All Luther wants to do is win the school science fair, think deep thoughts, find some action for the vintage condom in his wallet, and do something honest with his life. Curtis tells the teen's story with his usual combination of goofy humor, tongue-in-cheek corniness, and honest emotion. Accordingly, Luther narrates the absurd, embarrassing details of his life with both adult sensitivity and teen crassness. The dialogue between Luther and Sparky, his "womb to tomb" best friend, is at turns hilarious and touching. The Sarge herself is so convincingly sharp-tongued, shrewd, and despicable that she's the novel's juiciest character. The plot unfolds slowly at first, and teens may lose patience with Luther's tendency to feel sorry for himself. However, once his confidence begins to build, the story keeps a quickening pace with his character arc. His final revenge on the Sarge is so deftly constructed and the novel's resolution so satisfying that it makes up for the occasional lag in the lead-up. Any teen who's ever wanted to stick it to the man (or woman) will love this story.–Johanna Lewis, New York Public Library
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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
  
• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books (September 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385323077
• ISBN-13: 978-0385323079
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #652,673 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Richie's Picks: BUCKING THE SARGE, September 21, 2004

By	Richie Partington "http://richiespicks.com" (Sebastopol, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The nation's fifth and sixth grade teachers will return to school in September just in time to discover that Christopher Paul Curtis has forsaken them. BUCKING THE SARGE is not a book that they will be reading aloud to their students in the same way that thousands of them have been reading THE WATSONS GO TO BIRMINGHAM, 1963 and BUD NOT BUDDY.

But those of us who spend most of our time in the somewhat-older, YA world are gonna be doing some kind of badass NFL-style victory dance for having lured Christopher over to our side of the 'hood with his latest tale full of one-of-a-kind characters and occasional laugh-till-the-snot-and tears-pour-out situations.

"I don't mean to say my boy is obsessed, but Sparky blames all our problems on the fact that we live in Flint. Yeah, I'm looking to get out someday myself, but this is one of those things that me and Sparky don't think alike on. But that's not his fault. My mind is trained in a different way than his.
"I like to look at everything philosophically, and he doesn't. I've known since I was about six that thinking that way will get you what you need in life so I've been studying philosophical junk since then.
"It gets a laugh every time I tell someone but by the time I'm twenty-one I plan on being America's best-known, best-loved, best-paid philosopher. And that's a job that there's gotta be a big demand for 'cause how many full-time, professional American philosophers can you think of?
"I rest my case."

Luther T. Farrell is a skinny, six-foot-four student at Whittier Middle School. He is actually fifteen, even though his driver's license says eighteen. Sparky is his best friend and foil. Luther is a success with science fair projects but less so with love (as evidenced by the well-aged condom in his wallet that he's named Chauncey). He quietly longs for romance with Shayla, the pretty and smart undertaker's daughter whom he's known forever. He's also big on making lists.

Luther's mother, a.k.a. The Sarge, has him stretched between school and work. The Sarge is the loan-sharking, slum-lording, government reimbursement-sucking, ever-scamming operator of numerous sub-par establishments, including the Happy Neighbor Group Home for Men, where she's had Luther living with, caring for, and chauffeuring around the clients since he was thirteen.

For a reasonably easy and often-funny read, BUCKING THE SARGE is also riddled with complexities and darkness. The Sarge and Darnell Dixon ("the Sarge's go-to guy and my boss and one of Flint's leading psychopath nut jobs") are a matched set of ticking time bombs. The Sarge's consistently despicable and cruel treatment of society's most vulnerable groups--children, the poor, the elderly--is topped off by the pair's gross brutality during their eviction of a family that includes one of Luther's classmates.

When, at one point, Luther "[gets] up enough nerve to tell her that I was thinking about quitting working at the home and was probably gonna get a job at Micky D's," she repeats the jaw-dropping story of how she got to where she is today. The moral of that bitter recollection is that she has learned from the wealthy, the politicians, and the corporations to milk "any- and everything that moves. If it's got nipples, I'm going to milk it." To recognize this cold, hard, violent woman as a mimic and parody of the "winners" in the American economic system of the haves and the have-nots is to understand this subtle yet scathing indictment of the system.

Luther, himself, tells us that he's learned philosophically to see things from both sides. "What's important is that you keep your mind wide open and try to understand what's going on from a lot of different angles. That's what I try to remember every time I talk to the Sarge or think about her or try to understand why she is the way she is." But, in either case, we see a dangerous woman who--whether full of great advice or not--is clearly not in a space to be what we'd consider to be a loving mother.

And dark humor is certainly found in the dangerous extremes to which Luther's buddy, Sparky, is willing to go in order to try and escape Flint. Those vivid images make us cringe as we laugh (or is it laugh as we cringe).

"Sparky took three steps back, then fell in a pile limp as a towel you just dried off with after a shower. It seemed like all of his bones had been Jell-O-fied."

There are a wealth of contemporary coming of age tales, but in the hands of Christopher Paul Curtis it's a whole new story.

"I've learned that if you don't write down what you're thinking about, no matter how amazing it is you'll forget it. I don't like to brag, but I know I've had a couple of ideas that were so great and shocking that they'd've won the Nobel Peace Prize of Philosophy. The only problem was I didn't write them down and by the time I got home or got out of the shower they were long gone."

Even more so than with Kenny or Bud, we're left at the finish wondering about the future of this goodhearted kid we've come to love. You can be damned sure that I'll be keeping a lookout for America's great new, best-loved, professional philosopher.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book but parents and educators take note, March 28, 2005

By	C. Melcher "Bookster61" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is an excellent book.

Parents and educators, however, should know that there are sexual themes that make it more appropriate for more mature readers. These themes make it a very different book from "Bud Not Buddy." Sexuality *is* dealt with in a fairly responsible manner--others have mentioned Luther's condom so at least he's thinking about having *safer* sex!--but it is still pretty frank. I wouldn't just hand this to any given fourth grader.

Also Luther's mother and her boyfriend are *so* threatening to him that I think this book could be upsetting to children who are sensitive to stories about children who are emotionally abused by parents. (Although, that said, Curtis does a great job of explaining how Luther's mother came to be the way she is. Not to excuse her but she is a fully formed character.)

Again, an excellent book, but one probably best for older or more mature children within the reading level.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Bad, But Not Great, November 6, 2006

By	A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Bucking the Sarge (Readers Circle) (Mass Market Paperback)

This YA ("young adult") novel takes the reader into the unenviable life of Flint, Michigan 9th-grader Luther. The fatherless Luther is completely under the thumb of his domineering mother, a slumlord and neighborhood loanshark known as "the Sarge." To her, 15-year-old Luther isn't a son so much as unpaid help. She makes him live in one of her halfway homes and supervise its elderly internees. Other tasks include chauffeuring these old men around, cleaning houses after tenants have been evicted, and assisting his mother with the various scams she runs on the state social welfare system. Other than that, Luther is a typical awkward 9th-grader: pimply faced, obnoxious to the girl he has a crush on, and with a keen eye on winning the science fair again. He's also really nice and sweet, and a good kid -- which seems rather implausible given his upbringing.

The story is at turns comedic and tragic, however its main plotline concerns the school's science fair, which Luther is hoping to win for the third year running. This becomes a metaphor for his attitude to life, which is that hard work can lead to good things -- an approach his mother sneers at and calls "the sucker path." Her plan is for him to work for her and then inherit her empire, while he wants to go to college and get out of town. Since Luther makes such a big deal of working on his project, but the reader isn't told what it is, it's hardly surprising when the revelation of its topic ends up being a catalyst for a major turning point in Luther's life. Unfortunately, this climax is across-the-board implausible: (1) It's simply not believable that in the course of weeks of working on the project, the implications wouldn't have arisen in Luther's mind. (2) When the implications are clear, his mother acts contrary to character in terms of trust -- especially given the circumstances -- which allows the ending to unfold as it does. (3) A bit of incredible luck plays a key role in Luther's ultimate redemption. (4) The emotional implications of a kid running away from his only parent are never touched upon at all. The whole end plays out like some kind of film where an essentially good gangster is trying to quit the life and ditch his godfather, with all kinds of frantic scamming and planning.

Perhaps unintentionally it is Luther's acid-tongued mother who is the book's most compelling character -- when she speaks, it's not nice, but it is attention-grabbing. It's rare to find a story in which a mother is the cold-hearted parent, and the book doesn't do a very good job of explaining why she is the way she is. There is a backstory given, but it's rather hokey and simplistic. Her sidekick is a jheri-curled boyfriend/enforcer/gangster who is a barely contained menace to Luther's health. The men in the group home are a typical cast of comic relief, aside from the mysterious Chester X, who becomes a kind of cliche grandfather figure to Luther. His best friend Sparky provides more comic relief, as his solution to getting free of Flint is to fake an accident (with either a pit bull, diseased rat, or falling roof tile) and then win a settlement with the assistance of the local shyster lawyer. Unfortunately, unlike a proper best friend, about all Sparky is good for are numbskull schemes, and he disappears from the story for long stretches. It's a fairly engaging YA story on the whole, but it's also fairly superficial. Luther's predicament is never given the emotional depth or texture or even seriousness it merits, and some of the comic relief sequences are a little too broad and clunky. Not bad, but not great either.