Drawing a Blank: Or How I Tried to Solve a Mystery, End a Feud, and Land the Girl of My Dreams - Hardcover

Ehrenhaft, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060752521 ISBN 13: 9780060752521

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2006

Synopsis

I don't know how this happened

One day I'm snug in my loner existence at Carnegie Mansion School, and the next I'm tramping through the Scottish wilderness looking for my dad. Who's been kidnapped. Because of a feud that started in medieval times. Or something. Suffice it to say, I never paid too much attention because I thought the whole thing was some twisted figment of my dad's imagination.

Now my only company is a wannabe cop who just might be my superhero dream girl. And if I don't deliver some piece of mysterious "proof" to the kidnappers, my dad is toast. I've got my fair share of issues with my dad, but I don't really want to see him burned to a crisp.

Anyway, you in?

This is not the first time I've been wrong about something.

About this title

About the Authors

Daniel Ehrenhaft is the author of many books for teens, including the Edgar Award-winning Wessex Papers (under the pseudonym Daniel Parker), Dirty Laundry, and Drawing a Blank.

Author Daniel Ehrenhaft met illustrator Trevor Ristow at Columbia University in the early 1990s. There they founded a subversive guerrilla film and art collective known cryptically as E.N.R. They can now be found in New York City, where they continue to foment artistic revolution and creative mayhem whenever possible.

From the Back Cover

I don't know how this happened

One day I'm snug in my loner existence at Carnegie Mansion School, and the next I'm tramping through the Scottish wilderness looking for my dad. Who's been kidnapped. Because of a feud that started in medieval times. Or something. Suffice it to say, I never paid too much attention because I thought the whole thing was some twisted figment of my dad's imagination.

Now my only company is a wannabe cop who just might be my superhero dream girl. And if I don't deliver some piece of mysterious "proof" to the kidnappers, my dad is toast. I've got my fair share of issues with my dad, but I don't really want to see him burned to a crisp.

Anyway, you in?

This is not the first time I've been wrong about something.

Reviews

Starred Review. Grade 9 Up–Once again, Ehrenhaft has created a sympathetic and hapless teen antihero who manages to retain his sense of humor even when the chips are way, way down. In this outing, the plotline zigzags from a posh New England boarding school to the site of Carlton Dunne's father's kidnapping in Manhattan to a rescue mission undertaken in rural Scotland. The teen deals with a publisher who doesn't know that his hired talent is a boy rather than the man Carlton Dunne III; with nasty dorm mates who break all his personal stuff; and with a mystery girl who seems to be helping him in his Scottish quest to recover the dad he isn't sure he likes one bit. The girl, not surprisingly, isn't as simple and sweet as she seems at first blush. Carlton's parallel black-and-white comics (informed by his favorite childhood book of Nordic legends) do a clever job of echoing the story with its cast of superhero–and superantihero–antics. A fair amount of drinking in the Scottish countryside both advances the plot and makes the characters seem all the more real for their grittiness. Footnotes abound, and provide their own diminutive jokes as well as useful explanations of such traditions as the ancient game of ba'. Fluffy, but with that spicy edge of a deep-thinking outsider.–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* Gr. 8-11. Surprising in format as well as plot, Ehrenhaft's novel intersperses chapters of first-person narrative with episodes of Signy the Superbad, a superhero comic strip drawn by the narrator and inspired by his experiences. For Carlton, drawing comics is both a way of life and a retreat from it. Shipped off to a New England prep school by his distant father, who seems obsessed by an ancestral Scottish feud, Carlton copes by going through the motions at school and drawing his own alternate reality. A phone message from his father's kidnapper jolts him into action--and divides the novel into before, when Carlton's life features classmates barging into his room to conduct their annual "Who-Would-You-Bang Forum," and after, as Carlton and his enigmatic new friend Aileen roam the Scottish countryside attempting to find Carlton's father and recover an ancient dagger. For a self-described misanthrope, Carlton makes a very engaging character, caring but wary, vulnerable but game, and readers occasionally willing to suspend disbelief will find the narrative highly entertaining and sometimes enlightening. Intermittent footnotes supply information on various people (Dylan Thomas, Keith Richards, etc.) and facts and fictional details (prehistoric stone circles, a recipe for bannocks, Carlton's half sister's imaginary friend). A fresh, effervescent combination of mystery, adventure, and teen angst. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060752521
• ISBN 13: 9780060752521
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Ristow Trevor
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336