extra credit

Trueman, Terry. Stuck in Neutral NewYork: HarperCollinsPublisher, 2000

Annotation: 14 year old Shawn McDaniel has Cerebral Palsy. Everyone around him thinks he has no brain function, in reality, he can see and hear everything. He has the amazing ability to remember anything he has ever heard. His mother, brother, and sister treat him like a baby, but take good care of him. His father can not accept Shawn’s condition and it ends up splitting the family. His father is also convinced that Shawn is suffering and thinks the best thing for him is to die.

Justification for nomination: This Printz award winner is brilliantly written from the point of view of the main character. Although, everyone around him thinks he is “retarded”, he has all of the brain function of a able bodied teenager. The text has a progressive pattern of action that builds towards a climax at the end. The reader has to make an assumption as to whether Shawn’s father really does kill him or not, leaving the reader in a cliffhanger situation. The main character tells his story in first person that fits the story because we know how he feels and where he is at emotionally throughout the book. The writer uses humor, imagery, descriptive words, and irony to engage and challenge the reader. The setting does not change much for the main character because he is confined either to a wheelchair or his bed, but we as readers get to leave his environment and travel with his family. Shawn’s quest is finding out whether his father is really trying to kill him or not and if he would be better off dead. Along the journey, he begins to learn things about himself, of who he is in the world and realizes he wants to live. The plot is excellent. It grabs the reader’s attention and holds on. It is hard to put the book down. The cover illustration is hard to walk by and not pick up. It makes you want to pick up the book and read it. It’s dark and haunting and leaves the reader with a picture of what Shawn looks like making the story personal. This is a must read book.
Genre: Printz award/realistic novel/problem novel/search for identity