2013 Newbery Read book 13 Finished it took…

2013 Newbery Read, book 13
Finished… it took me 4 days? Such a short and easy book… of course, there are other things in life that prevented me from reading it continuously… but that’s not it. It simply did not hold my interest. There is something about having way way way too many details of some very very mundane things that can really kill a book. Even if it does give a sense of reality and I do appreciate that aspect of it. The emotional journey of the kid narrator is extremely realistic — and that’s a plus as well. (The narrative voice DOES get more kid-like after the beginning chapters.) However, there are some potential areas that the author could have explored (such as the relationship between the main character and his once-best friend and this other character’s growth or pain) that didn’t get much weight — limited by the choice of seeing the matters through a young person’s eyes. Not that the book should be preaching about anything but it definitely missed the opportunity to be a bit wiser or deeper…