From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up–Fifteen-year-old David Case, scared out of his acceptance of dailiness by his baby brothers near calamity at an open window, changes his name to Justin and allows several new people into his life. He is befriended by a somewhat older–and definitely more worldly–girl when he enters a thrift shop to remake his sartorial presentation. Angela is easy to fall in love with, but frustrating for Justin and suspicious for readers. Peter Prince, on the other hand, a new friend who urges Justin to discover how very good he is as a distance runner, lives up to his surname. Justins baby brother, Charlie, knowing and telepathic since birth, worries that Justin wont ever recover from the shock of having to haul him back from his experiment with flight. Justins other companions on the journey through the six months between that momentous occasion and Christmas include an invisible dog, Peters psychologically perceptive sisters, and their male rabbit, Alice. The crisis that flings Justin and Angela literally into bed together is a horrific plane crash at the local airport. As he runs from her gallery show of photos of him in shock in the disasters aftermath, he collides with a woman from whom he contracts meningitis, nearly allowing Fate to talk him into dying. Only Charlies visit to the hospital pulls Justin back from the existential abyss at which he has perched for six months. Rosoff writes of these characters and Justins interior and exterior adventures with beautiful grace and wit. Even sensitive teens usually have more psychological armor than Justin, but Rosoffs made him a compelling hero, not a nerd.–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
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