Jack's New Power: Stories from a Caribbean Year (Jack Henry Adventures)
Grade 6-8?Jack, 13, keeps a diary of his family's year in Barbados, the next stop after Florida?chronicled in Heads or Tails (Farrar, 1994). These entries are his adventures, observations, sketches, and perceptions of this mid-1960s Caribbean environment where pubescence, family disputes, and a fire all combine for a compelling read. Each episode stands on its own, but taken together they create a tropical world that is at once different and universal. Gantos covers pretty much all the bases: death, love, disease, and cock-fighting. Readers may not always like his quasi-autobiographical characters, but they're not likely to forget them anytime soon. In particular, Jack's dad can be a hero when he saves a drowning couple, but more often he's a mean-spirited bully who won't tolerate failure in his son. There's an edge here noted by events as mild as chicken beheadings or as graphic as the discovery of the decomposing body of a missing kid. Throw in humiliation (his true love disdains his "immaturity"), macabre hilarity (Jack's mom is convinced that her errant night shot has nailed a bystander), and surrealism (the drive-in movie screen catches fire while Paul Newman's Luke vandalizes parking meters), and you've got a rich paradise tempered by the wonderings of a confused adolescent.?John Sigwald, Unger Memorial Library, Plainview, TXCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.