Sprout

June 1, 2009
Gr 9 Up-Daniel "Sprout" Bradford, 16, does a lot of his thinking out loud, speaking directly to readers in a wisecracking voice about the differences between Long Island, where he used to live, and Kansas, where he and his dad live now. He also shares his thoughts about secrets, lies, friendship, and love. He'd be the first to tell you that he's gay and his hair is dyed green. With encouragement from his hard-drinking English teacher (and benign neglect from his hard-drinking father), the teen navigates the hallways of "uptight" Buhler High with Ruthie, Ian, and Ty, and prepares for an essay contest in Topeka. His advanced vocabulary and esoteric references to Samson, fucate objects, "Guns & Ammo", the Borg cube, and a double-entendre on Cumbria will intrigue readers who enjoyed Lemony Snicket's built-in definitions in their younger years. Sprout's wiseacre voice is often very funny and tinged with irony. The flawed adults seem a little unrealistic. The physical scenes are not overly detailed, though the teen's word choices can be a little crude. He will sometimes interrupt a passage that might be getting a little intimate by instructing readers to "Get your mind out of the gutter," or noting, "I'm not going to tell you what we did exactly, but there were a lot of giggles and a couple of ouches." At heart, this is the story of a boy looking for love, all the while knowing that the storybook "happily ever after" isn't going to apply to him."Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX"

Copyright 2009 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2009
Grades 10-1 Sixteen-year-old Daniel Sprout Bradford has been chosen to enter the statewide Kansas essay contest, and as his first-person narrative kicks off, it seemslike he is an obvious choice. He is bright and incisive, and he toys with tense and vocabulary with confident meta-awareness. On the other hand, he hardly fits the typical scholarship-winner profile: he has bright green hair, lives with his drunk father in a trailer home adorned with upside-down tree stumps, and is in turmoil over how public he wants to be about his homosexuality. There ishis best friend, there is his crush, there is his first love, and rather than addressing these characters simultaneously, Peck alternates their primacy in a way that isboth absorbing and jarring.But the prose is asintelligent andplayful as Sprout himself; even the name Sprout is a clue to Pecks pervading theme. The lengthy, leisurely chapters allow readersto live through the characters rather than view them as mere plot pushers, and the result is a story rarely content to move in conventional directions.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)