Destroy All Cars

May 25, 2009
High school student James Hoff is a passionate writer who rants about everything from sheeplike “Consumer Americans” to the destruction of the environment. He also writes about his ex-girlfriend Sadie, who he feels is a lightweight when it comes to saving the world. While Sadie is involved in positive initiatives like community food drives, James prefers a more radical approach (“The automobile is the foundation upon which our unsustainable lifestyle is based. They must be DESTROYED. All of them. Even the cute ones”). His pugnacious determination is admirable, but even he admits uninspired (“The problem is I don't believe in anything”). James comes to realize that his nihilism, both personal and political, is ultimately alienating him from others and preventing him from reaching his potential. James's journal entries and the combative essays that he writes (and rewrites) for his English teacher make up the brunt of the narrative and demonstrate his eventual growth. Nelson (Paranoid Park
) offers an elegant and bittersweet story of a teenager who is finding his voice and trying to make meaning in a world he often finds hopeless. Ages 15–up.

June 1, 2009
Grades 8-11 For 17-year-old James Hoff, the methods of his schools activist club (noteworthy member: his ex-girlfriend Sadie) are ineffectual at best. (The only way to save ourselves, he believes, is the complete annihilation of all automobiles.) The last few months of James junior year are told in diary form, punctuated by the scathing (and, often, explosively funny) manifestos he turns in for his AP English assignments, railing against vapid consumerism on one hand, and his ex-girlfriend on the other. But, of course, the more feminine of his two obsessions increasingly dominates his thoughts, and Sadie sure is cute when shes saving the planet. Nelson capably conveys adolescent amplificationgetting hip to a few things and then seeing the entire world through a defining prismbut halfway through siphons off the angst-grade fuel of James hilarious and vitriolic rants to let the story idle into fairly standard boy-gets/loses-girl territory. Its almost a shame to see James grown wiser by the end, so fun it is to watch him rail against everything at the outset.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)