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Deliver Us From Normal
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 6-9-Charles Harrisong is obsessed with the idea that he is strange and can't fit in with the sixth grade in Normal, IL. He feels that he possesses a special talent, the ability to know what people are really saying and thinking, all of which, he is sure, is directed at him and is negative to the extreme. He is especially embarrassed that his family rents rather than owns a home, wears home-sewn clothes, and lacks the material things that the other students feel are prerequisites. He painfully resists when teachers and the counselor try to help. When his older sister's campaign posters for seventh-grade class president are defaced in a particularly ugly way by clique leaders, the parents decide to leave town. They buy an Alabama houseboat over the telephone with the trade of their automobile and practically the last of their savings, a decision that leads to heartbreakingly hard work and even danger. Through Charles's narration, Klise offers a stunningly realistic look at the concatenations that the boy's obsessive thinking weaves. Each member of the family is carefully delineated. The Harrisongs' searching and differing perceptions of God will certainly spark discussion. Some of the siblings are naturally sunny, while others cry frequently. The parents make mistakes and argue, but this family's true love and deep engagement with one another mean that everyone can forgive and pull together. And, yes, sometimes it does take some real trouble to bring about the realization that everyday problems aren't real problems at all. A superb psychological novel.-Cindy Darling Codell, formerly at Clark Middle School, Winchester, KY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) In Normal, Illinois, sixth-grader Charles Harrisong feels that his family is anything but normal. Because he is intensely self-conscious, almost everything humiliates Charles past endurance, and in truth his classmates do tease him for being different. Yet the very family who so embarrasses Charles is also a source of strength and support. When, after a cruel incident at school, his sister Clara points out that Charles isn't just shy, that the other kids' treatment of him ""made him shy,"" the Harrisongs pack up their belongings and move to a houseboat they bought sight unseen. This reckless action isn't altogether plausible, but Klise's ear for family dynamics is dead-on, with each family member precisely and delicately drawn as the family relationships shift with their risky move. Klise's previous books (Regarding the Fountain, etc.) used devices such as letters and newspaper clippings to assemble the story; in this, her first straightforward narrative, she shows a gift for getting inside her narrator, delivering his perceptions with immediacy and self-deprecating humor. Readers will hope for a sequel to this touching, funny book. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Klise, better known for oddball mysteries, goes here for a more character-driven family story, narrated by an 11-year-old middle child edging toward serious depression. Compiling lists like "The Most Embarrassing Things in My Life," Charles Harrisong glumly records efforts of his hardworking parents to make ends meet, the tumultuous teasing and tears at home among his four siblings and his own unsuccessful efforts to escape the jeering notice of his middle school's in-crowd. Just beneath these seemingly routine trappings, however, lurks a far more rewarding tale, for the Harrisongs are one of those uncommon (at least, in literature) species, a cohesive nuclear family whose members, for all their occasional fallings-out, love and respect each other to pieces. Better yet, Klise doesn't tell, she shows, leading readers gradually into the hearts and spirits of her characters--while taking those characters on a seriocomic odyssey of their own, as they impetuously leave their rented Illinois home for a leaky houseboat off the Alabama coast, and a well-earned fresh start. Nothing "normal" here. (Fiction. 11-13) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 5-8. Charles Harrisong, a neurotic 11-year-old, lives in Normal, Illinois, a cruel irony considering that his large, poor, anything-but-normal family is one of the Most Embarrassing Things in His Life. Case in point: His free-spirited sister, Clara, runs for seventh-grade president, convinced that the awesome power of positive thinking can trump the stigma of belonging to the ragtag Harrisong tribe. When Clara's campaign posters are defaced by the popular clique, the siblings' horrified parents react boldly, pulling their kids out of school, moving to Alabama's gulf coast, and launching a radical new life aboard a fixer-upper houseboat.\b Klise, who cocreated several other middle-grade novels with her sister, is prone to sophisticated, slightly dyspeptic observations that don't always seem convincing coming from a sixth-grader, and the references to To Kill a Mockingbird (Charles identifies with Boo Radley) will go over the heads of many. Even so, readers as precocious as Charles will sympathize with the social anxieties Klise probes, and feel comforted by her uptight protagonist's gradual relaxation into the extraordinary ordinariness of life. --Jennifer Mattson Copyright 2005 Booklist