Sons of the 613

September 24, 2012
Adult author Rubens (The Sheriff of Yrnameer) channels 1980s teen movies in his outlandish YA debut about what happens when the parents are away. Isaac, a superb student, loyal Dungeons and Dragons player, and one of the few Jews in his small Midwestern town, fails to tell his parents that his Hebrew tutor has neglected to show up for weeks. He's thus woefully unprepared for his bar mitzvah, and when his parents travel to Italy, they leave him in the hands of his comically terrifying older brother, Josh: jock, bar brawler, and "SuperJew" (the kind that wears a skull-and-crossbones yarmulke). Josh decides that Isaac needs a "real" education, and they embark on a series of adventures designed to make Isaac a man, from trips to bars to forced camping excursions. Isaac recounts his torturous "quest" with all the neuroses and self-pity of a middle-grade Woody Allen, and while the story sometimes falters under the weight of its conceit, the dark humor will keep readers laughing. Despite a jarringly downbeat ending, Rubens creates a funny, frank portrayal of adolescent humiliation and the trouble with older brothers. Ages 12âup.

August 1, 2012
This is a book every bar-mitzvah boy will want to steal. "What's the first thing you say up there onstage during your bar mitzvah?" asks Josh. Josh is holding his brother Isaac over his head. Josh is taking a break from his wrestling scholarship at NYU and taking care of Isaac while their parents are in Italy. Isaac is supposed to say, "Today, I am a man." They both think that's pretty stupid. "Are you a man?" Josh asks. Isaac: "Um...no?" Josh: "No, you're not. You're still a boy." This may be the least interesting statement in the book, because every bar-mitzvah boy already knows it. But no parent will ever give this book as a bar-mitzvah gift because of the bar fights, the strippers and the vomit. Josh has decided to turn his brother into a man, and he's decided to do it in the three weeks before Isaac turns 13. Isaac will meet Josh's friends: strippers, an African-American pool player in a porkpie hat and Patrick the Meth-Dealing Punk. Parents will expect a bar-mitzvah book to inspire their child, teach him something and make him proud to be Jewish. Surprisingly, this novel accomplishes two out of three. This book won't make readers proud to be Jewish. It will make them proud to be a pool player in a porkpie hat, a tattooed punk or anyone who survives all the way to 13. Everyone should read it the moment he becomes a man. (Fiction. 13-17)

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December 1, 2012

Gr 7 Up-Isaac Kaplan's Bar Mitzvah is fast approaching. In just three short weeks, he is slated for the ceremony that will formally declare him to be a man. Unfortunately, the tutor employed to school Isaac in Hebrew has failed to show up for the regularly scheduled sessions, a detail that Isaac has neglected to disclose to his parents. Now they inform him of their plans to spend two weeks in Italy, leaving his older brother in charge. It is up to Josh, a monstrous hulklike figure who has his own anger-management issues and who mysteriously returned home after one and a half semesters at NYU, to care for his younger sibling while their parents are away. Josh's preparations for his geeky younger brother's rite of passage are not the traditional tutoring sessions. Instead they include intense fitness conditioning, sleeping each night in a tent, and forays into bars and strip joints. Events are further complicated by Isaac's infatuation with Josh's friend Lesley and the uneasy tension among the three. With Lesley, Isaac experiences his first real crush and, eventually, his first heartbreak. He learns to confront his fears, including the school bully, and discover for himself what it means to be a man. "'Are you afraid of him?' I think about that. Am I afraid of him? Not anymore." Rubens captures the nerdy geekiness of middle-school-aged boys in short and snappy, cleverly formatted chapters rich with sarcasm, humor, and pathos.-Barbara M. Moon, Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2012
Grades 8-10 The book begins and ends with two excruciating events. The first: a bar mitzvah boy with food poisoning vomits all over the bimah. The final episode is not unexpected but heart wrenching. In between, there is chaos. Isaac is not the barfer, but his ceremony is fast approaching, and he's freaked out. When Isaac's parents leave on a trip three weeks before the event, 20-year-old Josh, a recent college dropout, is put in charge of brother Isaac and their younger sister. (BTW, no mother decides to vacation a few weeks before a bar mitzvah, but as a plot device, it works.) Isaac's raunchy, riotous first-person telling describes how hot-tempered Josh decides to help Isaac really become a man. There are tests of strength, will, and courage, though some are decidedly inside out. There's first love, first kisses, first fights, friendships made and friendships broken, a fire, and a party to end all parties. Rubens, a former producer for The Daily Show, neatly gets inside Isaac's head, and although there's something to offend almost everyone here, there's also plenty to thinkand laughabout.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)