12 Things to Do Before You Crash and Burn

Starred review from October 10, 2011
Time and again, picture-book creator Proimos has demonstrated a rock-solid sense of humor and outside-the-box thinking. His first book for teens is no different, opening a promising new chapter in his career. Sixteen-year-old James Martino, nicknamed Hercules, is spending the summer in Baltimore with his Uncle Anthony, who has given him a list of 12 tasks to accomplish (one even involves cleaning a stable). It’s meant to stave off boredom and maybe help Hercules deal with the recent death of his father, a beloved self-help author and talk-show host. Beloved by all but Hercules, that is, who eulogizes his father thusly: “He was an ass.” In chapters lasting just a page or so, Hercules gives a blunt and blisteringly funny account of his misadventures (“Horses are running everywhere. We are in the jeep. Chasing them. Through streets. Through other people’s farms. Through hell and high water, really”), which revolve around his efforts to reconnect with a “Strange Beautiful Unattainable Woman” from the train to Baltimore. Proimos fully inhabits the mind and voice of his hero, whose almost mythic journey offers moments hilarious, heartbreaking, and triumphant. Ages 14–up.

October 1, 2011
Homeless dudes, hot pizza girls, tanning salons and horse-stable make-out sessions punctuate a summer in Baltimore. After his television-celebrity dad's death, 16-year-old Hercules Martino is sent from his Upper West Side home to Baltimore to spend the last two weeks of summer with his Uncle Anthony. Upon arrival, Hercules is handed a list of things he must accomplish during his stay, and despite his resistance, he somehow manages to stumble into each and every one of them. The one he deems most important finds him chasing a lost copy of Winnie-the-Pooh for a hot college girl and sets him on a trajectory to complete the other tasks. Although Hercules and Anthony have never hit it off, their hilarious "man speak" insult-based dialogue intimately suggests that a connection does exist between them. Told in short, near-poetic vignettes, the chapters of Proimos' first teen novel are packed with plenty of small details and genuine moments of ridiculous humor. Often these chapters are too short and lack connective tissue, however, which results in confusing passages of time, odd jumps in plotting and, most often, a longing for more details. Still, readers will relish Hercules' smart-alecky, slacker sense of humor and his dogged determination to get the girl. An all-too-brief madcap summer adventure of longing, lust, confusion and clarity. (Fiction. 12 & up)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 1, 2011

Gr 10 Up-Hercules Martino, 16, sits in a room full of his famous father's admirers listening to mourners shower the closed coffin with gushing eulogies. Hercules, however, can't quite make himself say anything nice about the man. After the funeral, his mother sends him to finish out the summer with his bachelor uncle. On the train ride to Baltimore, the teen sits next to a "Strange Beautiful Unattainable Woman" and thinks he must have her. When she gets off, she leaves her book behind. From that point on, she becomes a much-needed distraction for Hercules, as well as part of the 12 tasks his uncle assigns him to complete during his two-week stay. His first task is to choose a mission. He opts to find the Strange Beautiful Unattainable Woman and return her book. As Hercules halfheartedly completes the tasks, he finds small moments of everyday magic and discovers new aspects of himself, his family, and life. In a minimum of pages, Hercules charms readers with humor and honesty, often in raw language, and his story will appeal to those who have admired the passing Strange Beautiful Unattainable person, including reluctant readers.-Mindy Whipple, West Jordan Library, UT

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.