Starred Review ALA Booklist (Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 CDT 1992)

Starred Review Brooks tells a good story, and he makes the telling part of the tale. Many of the themes found in his earlier books, like The Moves Make the Man , are developed in these four long stories about the boy Asa, especially the child's relationship with his emotionally fragile mother and his hostile competition with his stepfather. Asa's seven years old in the first story when he rushes home to show off his great report card--only to find that his mother and he are leaving his father. They move seven times in the next three years. Like all of Brooks' protagonists, the kid is smart and sensitive and trying to stay in control as he grows older. Just when he irritates you the most with his deliberate analyzing and overarticulate view of what's happening to him, something upsets all his careful order, and his fragility grabs your heart. In the unforgettable first story, his stepfather-to-be forces the seven-year-old boy onto a solitary roller coaster ride; and the surreal images of jerking and whirling out of control--the terror and the thrill--recur throughout the book in dark, mysterious counterpoint to Asa's shining intelligence. These are sophisticated, perhaps adult, stories. As in Midnight Hour Encores , Brooks deliberately plays with formula and then shocks you out of it, whether it's a seventh-grader's declaration of love or a male bonding on the baseball field. The sports story, in which the stepfather helps Asa train for the Little League tryouts, combines fast, exciting action with scenes of domestic stress and gentleness as well as an astonishing ending that proves the power of the individual imagination. Always, that's what gets Asa through yet another disturbing upheaval, the order he finds through words. (Reviewed Sept. 1, 1992)

Horn Book

Original in structure and subtle in scope, the novel begins when Asa is just graduating from the first grade and ends when he is an adolescent. The four short stories are about love--within a family, among friends, between boy and girl, husband and wife--painful, hopeful, and inevitable as spring.

Kirkus Reviews

From an outstandingly perceptive writer, a moving portrait of a boy of extraordinary intelligence and sensitivity, observed at four revealing turning points. Just out of first grade, Asa rushes triumphantly home to share the splendid radishes he has grown, but finds his parents breaking up and his mother taking him to meet antagonistic, inflexible Dave, soon to be his stepfather. Later, Asa's quick comprehension of what makes people tick, plus his well-honed manipulative skills, earn him easy acceptance in a new fourth grade but a painfully aborted relationship in seventh. Meanwhile, Dave is an unexpectedly talented coach for the sports in which Asa excels—until, overcome by his normal malice, he knocks Asa down with a hard-thrown baseball. The two also become unwilling collaborators in dealing with Asa's deeply disturbed mother. Dave—who resembles Bix's dad in The Moves Make the Man (Brooks's first, and until now best, book)—accuses Asa of being all head and no heart, but Brooks develops the subtle relationships between the two—Asa does often hide behind rationalism but also, twice, retreats compassionately from hard-won goals in order to avoid hurting a peer. A brilliant demonstration that childhood's battles are less important than what one brings to them: Bix was defined by family conflict, but Asa—possessed of a rare sweetness, humor, and inner strength—survives intact the cruel tests to his integrity, intellect, and sense of decency. (Fiction. 11-14)"

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

``Effectively revealing the psychological burdens of an intelligent, sensitive child, this book remains honest and intense from beginning to end,'' PW said in a starred review of this Newbery Honor title. Ages 12-up.(Feb.) q

School Library Journal

Gr 5 Up-- Soon after first-grader Asa is told of his parents' impending divorce, he is abruptly introduced to Dave, his stepfather-to-be. Dave does not like the boy, who's smart and precocious, sometimes obnoxiously so. His mother, who becomes increasingly depressed, objects only mildly to her new husband's negative attitude toward her son. When Asa is about 12, his mother has an emotional breakdown and divorces again. Ironically, Asa and Dave have gradually reached an understanding of sorts. By the end, Asa has learned to accept life's hard knocks and he risks telling a girl he loves her. Although she proves fickle, he survives with a sense of inner strength and hope for a better tomorrow. The boy's adultlike understanding of others is sometimes hard to believe, and this might make it difficult for readers to empathize with him. In contrast, Dave is effectively depicted as a hard, angry man with a heart underneath. A boy's coming-of-age story set within a troubled stepfamily is a worthy endeavor, and Brooks is extremely skilled in describing psychological subtleties of thoughts, feelings, and relationships. However, his highly contemplative style may lack the immediacy necessary to grab all but the brightest, most ``Asa-like'' readers.-- Jacqueline Rose, Southeast Regional Library, NC