ALA Booklist (Sat Oct 01 00:00:00 CDT 1994)

Fifteen-year-old Julian, who lives with his indifferent father and demented stepmother, is a victim of emotional and physical abuse. Not only is he fed barely enough to sustain him, but he also is locked into the garage at night and forced to pee in a bucket kept in his room as a constant reminder of his subhuman status. The memory of his deceased mother and her love is Julian's primary source of strength, and coded notebooks (NBs) written to her are his salvation. He exists like a prisoner of war for whom all communication is treacherous: it is not safe to C (cry) and too terrifying to express fantasies of K177ing (killing). It's sometimes difficult to make sense of Julian's special terms, especially at the outset, but the intensity and emotion behind the words are unmistakable and immediate. When Julian finally writes I am an abused child, the strength, anger, and determination of a survivor emerges. Characterizations, including that of a caring but troubled classmate who becomes a kind of deus ex machina (rescuing Julian from the brink of self-destruction), are well done, but it is the unusual language that gives the story its power: the words evoke stinging layers of hurt and the galling horror of abuse, as well as the courage, hope, and tenacity needed to survive and escape. (Reviewed October 15, 1994)

Horn Book

Abused by his father and stepmother, Julian is too upset and afraid even to write about it clearly in his journal. Instead, he writes in code to express his despair. When a teacher disbelieves the severity of his problem, Julian runs away. Readers who struggle through the complex text, much of which is written in Julian's personal code, will be rewarded with a powerful and gripping survival story.

Kirkus Reviews (Tue Feb 28 00:00:00 CST 2023)

``I am an abused child, (but I can't tell you that),'' writes Julian Drew, 15, when his English teacher tells him to write the truest sentence he knows. Although he is physically unharmed—except for being hungry most of the time—Julian suffers extreme mental anguish in the Arizona home of his father and stepmother. They lock him in his room and give him a can to pee in; they intentionally feed him inedible food while his siblings—full, half, and step—get treats; when they all go out together, they lock him out of the house in the cold. They are so awful that Julian can't even write about it in his first notebook (NB), in which he addresses his deceased mother. Julian writes in code, using numbers, abbreviations, or Xs for unmentionable words. By the second notebook, Julian has improved. And by the third he writes in full sentences, describing how he ran away from his family back to his native West Virginia. He is now living there with Susan, a friend from Arizona who has also run away, as they try to restructure their sad lives. With an inventive vision, Deem (How To Read Your Mother's Mind, p. 302, etc.) presents a hard-edged tale of abuse and recovery. (Fiction. 12+)"

School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up-A challenging and oddly compelling story of an abused teenager who fights a heroic battle to deal with his mother's death and to survive the mistreatment of one of the most vicious stepmothers in all of literature. NB, in Julian's shorthand, means notebook-the only means out of his profound loneliness and pain. His mother died when he was in the fifth grade, leaving him almost instantly in the hands of `stepnother.'' She locks him in his garage room, virtually starves him, and inflicts an endless string of verbal and physical abuses that drive him nearly to madness. NB1 expresses his complete isolation. In NB2, he begins to make contact with a girl in his Spanish class, his English teacher encourages his writing, and he gets a job. In NB3, it all falls apart and he runs away to Wheeling, WV, where his mother died. Here, his prophetic dreams of a letter from his mother, the book Portrait of Jennie, and his obsessive desire to go back in time to rejoin his mother converge. Instead, he nearly dies and is joined by Susan from Spanish class who has run away, pregnant, from her own destructive home to be with the "weirdest, nicest person I've ever met and the biggest puzzle I've ever tried to solve.'" All of the characters, even the most minor, are surprisingly vivid and real. The plot structure and the parallels to Portrait of Jennie are consistent and logical, and they add an intriguing twist to Julian's search for his mother and his past. But best of all, Deem leaves enough literary space between dialogue and action for readers to infer character and emotion, which is a blessed relief from the heavy-handedness of so many YA novels. Overall, a well-written book about a character well worth knowing.-Kathy Fritts, Jesuit High School, Portland, OR