Synopsis
Robbie Jones, a quiet and aloof thirteen-year-old, one day, uncharacteristically takes his father's gun and fatally shoots an elderly Korean shopkeeper, and then he cannot explain why, even though he confesses to the crime.
Reviews
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.
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.
With a series of shocked responses to an apparently random murder, Walter (Hi, Pizza Man, 1995) challenges readers to make sense of a senseless act. On his 13th birthday, Robbie Jones takes his father's handgun, shoots an elderly Korean store owner, then crouches numbly in a tree until apprehended. Why? Robbie's teacher (``He was never a behavior problem''), classmates (``a geeky little guy''), parents (``He wasn't a bad boy''), witnesses, lawyer, and police officers are all mystified. Robbie disappears into prison without offering an explanation, and only a few enigmatic clues emerge: his infatuation with a classmate; his tough-talking, utterly clueless father; the superhero he and a friend create whose specialty is helping children in trouble. The book is obtrusively designed; using an array of typefaces, blocks of text clipped and pasted at an angle, and dark, distorted, computer- manipulated photo-montages, Roeckelein creates an ominous, sometimes disorienting atmosphere that suggests a turmoil in Robbie that never shows up in the text. Only near the end does he make a statement, and that indirectly, with a comic-book scenario in which Megaboy, sensitive to ``unspoken cries for help,'' makes ``a human child born on the wrong planet'' his sidekick. An eerie, disturbing puzzle that leaves readers to identify and assemble the pieces themselves, with results that may not be satisfying. (Fiction. 11-13) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Gr. 6^-9. Taking a gun from his father's bureau, a boy gets on his bike, rides to a local liquor store, and shoots the elderly proprietor dead. It's a violent scenario right out of recent headlines, and we have no trouble imagining the tragic events--even though they are actually over when this book begins. That 13-year-old Robbie Jones brutally killed Mr. Jae Lin Koh is never in dispute. The characters--the witnesses, Robbie's middle-class parents, his friend Ruben, his classmates, his lawyer, even the young murderer himself--acknowledge Robbie's guilt. It's the why that is so disconcerting and puzzling--and Robbie "isn't talking." Through a perfectly modulated blend of computer-generated graphics and separate, rivetingly concise first-person perspectives, readers get a glimpse of Robbie (his home life, his crush on self-involved Tara, his cartoon hero Megaboy) and the people affected by his action (among them, the devastated Mrs. Koh, Robbie's obdurate father, a classmate who can't help but "look differently at everybody now"). The horror is Robbie's retreat into a comic-book world that he's created with his own hand--and the absence of any indication that he'll ever come out. Although this is not a graphic novel in the usual sense--it's not in comic-strip format--the pictures are an integral part of the whole. Reflecting the mood rather than the action, they add a surreal quality that makes the story all the more frightening; some ripple and pulse with movement, others speak loudly with their silence: the hallway at Robbie's school, a collage of family photos that makes Robbie real. Along with Walter Dean Myers' Scorpions (1988) and Sonia Levitin's Adam's War (1994), this is part of a growing number of novels for the age group that focus on the tragic outcome of guns in the hands of children. What's different here is the intimacy--this lost child, the classic outsider, could easily be part of the family next door. The possibilities for discussion are endless: gun control, mental health, family relationships, prejudice, how what we do impacts on those around us, the failure of society to reach out to help its children. And readers will certainly argue motive: Did he do it for Tara? Did he do it for fun? Or was he crazy? Stephanie Zvirin
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