You Don't Know About Me

Starred review from March 14, 2011
Meehl (Suck It Up) draws inspiration from an American classic in this thought-provoking, often philosophical coming-of-age tale. Almost 16, Billy has spent his entire life traveling with his mother and fighting the good fight as "ninja warriors for the Lord." While Billy is secure in his faith and a willing crusader, he's ready to give up homeschooling for high school and lead a normal, nonnomadic life. The arrival of a message from his (supposedly dead) father gives Billy the impetus to break free and go on a wild road trip. Led by clues hidden in a copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he travels cross-country, finding an unlikely traveling companion in Ruah Branch, a closeted gay black, professional baseball player. Billy and Ruah's friendship is tested by religious and personal beliefs, forcing
Billy to rethink everything he's ever known. Throw in a trip to Burning Man, a pair of con artists, and the legendary
sequel to Huckleberry Finn, and you have a recipe for a story both strange and wonderful. Meehl doesn't pull any punches as his characters undergo their own journeys to freedom in this powerful, intelligent tale. Ages 14âup.

April 1, 2011
Home-schooled 16-year-old Jesus freak Billy Allbright leaves his overprotective mom to embark on a geocaching treasure hunt through the western United States. His aim? To uncover the truth about his dead Mark Twain–scholar father and to locate a valuable manuscript Twain supposedly penned as the sequel to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. References to the classic run (amok) from the obvious—a lovable, gay, African-American major-league baseball player sidekick named Ruah—to more subtle ones that connect religion, gender and love. Despite some roadblocks, Meehl spins a complex, thought-provoking plot in which the duo's spiritual journeys mirror their physical hunt. The meat lies in their heady conversations on the road. These platitude-filled interludes on religion and sexuality go on for pages, however, and may cause readers to skip to get to the action. Characterizations occasionally feel uneven, especially when Billy makes references to things like SparkNotes and technology that neither his mother nor his background would allow. Meehl also occasionally stumbles over language: Billy's dad leaves clues in the form of hokey, clunky, rhyming couplets that link Twain's work to the hunt. Still, the work's ambition is admirable, and readers who have grown tired of the supernatural and the dystopic will be thrilled to sink their teeth and their brains into reality. (Fiction. 14 & up)

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June 1, 2011

Gr 8-10-Billy Allbright, 16, has spent most of his life on the road with his mother as self-proclaimed members of the "New J-Brigade," an itinerant Christian organization of two bent on "playing Whac-a-Mole with the devil." Itching to attend a real high school, Billy plans to petition his mother for more freedom when he receives a mysterious package from the father he had been told was dead. It contains a fancy Bible; hidden in it are a DVD and the first pages of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The DVD is of Billy's father, who, speaking from his deathbed, invites his son to geocache across the country in search of a valuable unpublished novel by Mark Twain, so Billy sets off to follow his father's clues wherever they might lead. En route, he forms an unexpected partnership with a black professional baseball player grappling with his decision to come out, who agrees to chauffeur the teen on his scavenger hunt if the boy agrees to read Huck Finn aloud to him. Although united by their Christianity, Ruah's theology is more liberal than Billy's, and the two clash over Ruah's sexuality and philosophy, occasionally separating them but always meeting back up again. This road-trip story is not representative of traditional Christianity as Ruah's more liberal interpretations of the Bible ("God is greater than any sin I can commit, even if it's being gay.") are favored here. Meehl's novel is a slow starter but is good-hearted and, though the story suffers from its characters' belabored exegesis of Huck Finn and the Bible, the pace picks up as it nears its conclusion.-Amy S. Pattee, Simmons College, Boston

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2011
Grades 9-12 Sixteen-year-old Billy and his strong-willed, single-parent mom are self-styled antinomians: they put Gods law above mans. Their occasional little scraps with Satanlike blotting out the word devil on products at the local Piggly Wigglysometimes lead to hasty departures from whatever town theyre living in. After they arrive in Independence, Missouri, Billy receives a mysterious package in the mail that sets him off on a cross-country trip in search of treasure. Before long, the runaway Billy is befriended by Ruah Branch, a celebrated African American baseball player who is himself AWOL from his major-league team, and off the two go, helped on their way by strategically placed clues. If all this sounds vaguely familiar, its because Meehl has undertaken a modern reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, though its hard to imagine what the famously skeptical Twain would make of the conservative Christian framework. Similarly, a subplot involving homosexuality may leave both conservatives and liberals unhappy (no mean feat). All this, however, provides fodder for discussion and debate that many teachers will welcome for classroom use.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)