Freaky Fast Frankie Joe

Starred review from March 15, 2012
While his mom is in jail, Frankie Joe tries to adjust to living with his newly surfaced father, FJ, his stepmother and "the four legitimate Huckaby sons." The brothers tease Frankie Joe because, academically, he is "freaky slow," which is at odds with how fast he is when he runs or bikes. The tension and the cast of characters are well-developed, especially Frankie Joe, who is believably resistant to the new setting and the rules of the house. Speaking in the first-person, Frankie Joe shows spunk, spinning the taunt into a positive when he launches Frankie Joe's Freaky Fast Delivery Service. With his income, he plans his escape back home from Illinois to Texas. But with each day Frankie Joe becomes more integrated into--and essential to--the town and the family, starting with his friendship with another town oddball, elderly Miss Peachcott. She tells Frankie Joe his family history. With this reveal, the author realistically depicts Frankie Joe's growing doubts about his mother's decisions. His mother's final act, abandoning him to FJ, leaves Frankie Joe grief-stricken and depressed but he now has a new understanding of what responsibility and home mean. The pace in this debut is leisurely, but readers, like the town folk and his newfound family, will be rooting for Frankie Joe. The final scenes soar with hope. (Fiction. 8-12)

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May 1, 2012

Gr 4-6-With his mom in jail for drug possession, Frankie Joe goes to live in Illinois with his father, whom he barely remembers, and his father's new wife and four sons. None of the boys is happy with this arrangement. To make matters worse, the 12-year-old is placed in fourth grade instead of sixth because he missed too much school the previous year. Eager to escape from this life, Frankie Joe starts a bicycle delivery business to try to save enough money to return to his friends in his Texas trailer park. When his mother gets out of jail and agrees to let his new family adopt him, Frankie Joe has to rethink his plans and come to grips with the fact that she has another life and doesn't want him with her. Definitions of words the protagonist looks up to educate himself are interspersed throughout this first novel that tugs at readers' heartstrings. Although Frankie Joe's amazing adaptation to a stable environment is almost too good to be true, children in blended families, including reluctant readers, will relate to this story.-Kathy Lyday, William Lenoir Middle School, Lenoir, NC

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2012
Grades 4-6 Twelve-year-old Frankie Joe has a lot of new people in his life after his mom lands in jail and he is sent off to Plainview, Illinois: his father, the four half brothers he is now forced to live with, and a school full of kids all too ready to label the tall boy from Texas as a freak. Nevertheless, the hardworking Frankie Joe struggles through it all to emerge as a winning protagonist. At first the unhappy boy plans on using his trustworthy bike to haul himself back to Laredo. But as Frankie Joe starts a delivery service in an effort to make money for his secret trip, he gets to know his adopted town. The admiration and trust he finds from its disparate inhabitants (a lonely farmer, an elderly woman concocting cosmetics, a perky classmate) begin to change the gangly boy's opinions, just as surely as the steady, no-nonsense affection of his father and stepmother. Readers who enjoy graceful, understated humor in their realistic fiction should find this right up their alleyor corn field, as it the case may be.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)