The Library Card

Four stories about the life-changing effect of a library card on the kids who discover it follow Mongoose, who cannot get away from his card; Brenda, whose life is saved; Sonseray, a homeless boy; and April, who rides a bookmobile.

Grade 4-8. These four stories feature different characters, styles, and moods, but each plot hinges upon a library card. In "Mongoose," the strongest story, two 12-year-old boys become partners in crime and rebellion. Weasel convinces Mongoose to shoplift and spray graffiti, but when Mongoose enters a library for the first time and is mesmerized by a book of unusual facts, the friendship begins to unravel. The point of view shifts from Mongoose to Weasel halfway through, neatly accentuating their different outlooks. "Brenda" is a television addict trying to survive the Great TV Turn-Off. The satire is obvious but the humor is still sharp and insightful. "Sonseray" is a troubled homeless teen, tortured by memories of his mother. His library card brings him to a preschool storytime and the storyteller is mysteriously compelled to read an adult romance novel to Sonseray: the same book the boy's mother repeatedly read to him as a child. When he checks it out, he regains some of the precious memories he has yearned for. "April Mendez" gets picked up by a bookmobile, where she meets an older girl who claims to be hijacking the vehicle. April befriends the girl and gives her a library card as a farewell present. In this story, the friendship and trust between the two develops without the card. Taking all four tales together, the device seems a bit forced and artificial, rather than a unifying element. Though not completely satisfying as a collection, Spinelli's unique characters and lively wit will interest many readers.?Steven Engelfried, West Linn Public Library, OR
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Spinelli (The Bathwater Gang Gets Down to Business, 1992, etc.) has spun four disparate stories linked through the inanimate object that appears in each--a library card. As is true of the omniscient librarian who appears in some of the stories, the library card is supernatural. It imposes itself first on Mongoose, or Jamie, who with his 12-year-old friend shoplifts candy and makes mischief until he is pulled into an intoxicating world of learning. In ``Brenda,'' broadly comic events occur when a TV-crazy teen has the plug pulled for a week. After such desperate moments as when she puts the rabbit ears of an absent television into her mouth, hoping to pick up signals, she begins to catch up on her life. In ``Sonseray,'' a homeless drifter pays back his mean and lonely nephew by withholding details of the boy's dead mother, an unusual and powerful piece of cruelty. The last story shows two unlikely friends making a match. The realistic characters are funny and profound at times, and the prose occasionally invites readers to linger over a description. Spinelli is a shrewd storyteller, balancing lighter moments with provocative ones to meaningful effect. (Fiction. 8-14) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gr. 5^-7. Whether he's writing about gender roles in There's a Girl in My Hammerlock (1991) or about how books change lives in these four short stories, Spinelli is able to convey the message with humor and tenderness and with a fast-talking immediacy about the preteen scene. The first and best story here begins with two city kids shoplifting and vandalizing their neighborhood, spraying the place with graffiti, and dissing each other with cheerful hostility as they dream of the big cars they will drive one day. Then one of them discovers the library and the wonder of science, and he's transformed. By the end of the story, the point of view has switched to the one who hasn't changed, the one left behind with his spray-can and his empty dreams. That sense of vulnerability is also the appeal in another story about a violent outcast, who makes the storyteller in the library read to him from a romance novel. The most obviously didactic story is a one-note farce about a suburban girl who goes through withdrawal symptoms when there's a TV blackout, and--you guessed it--discovers herself and her world in the library. One more thing makes this a choice for National Library Week: the librarians are perfect. Hazel Rochman