Novel Evaluation

The book starts out Billy explaining that he and Eddie are the best and only friends that they have. Then it starts explaining how random Eddie is. He is so random that he first got a 65 on his IQ test. If you don’t know, that’s means that he needs to go into the special ed program. Then it when Eddie explained the situation to Billy’s dad, Billy’s dad goes to the principal to explain the situation. The principal said no, but Billy’s dad is the janitor in the school so he found another test, and he gave it to Eddie five questions at a time. He then scored about 100 points higher than his last score. His score was off the charts, but the principal wouldn’t put it on record. He did let Eddie get out of the special ed classes. Then the problems begin. Eddie’s dad dies first, and then Billy dies. When Billy dies, Eddie goes into shock and doesn’t speak for about 3 months. He goes to church, but he doesn’t like it. He hates church, and Tarter is trying to pull Eddie into getting baptized. Eddie doesn’t think that that is such a bad idea because he is having dreams about Billy and a sledding hill. He thinks that this is the only way that he will get rid of the dreams is to get baptized. When he goes to the first meeting, he realizes that Tarter is a racist, and Eddie doesn’t like that. So when school starts back up again, the one class that he was looking forward to was a modern literature class. When Eddie got the book that he was required to read, the church bans the book. The reason that the church wants the book banned is because they think that the content is too adult for young kids. This gives a reason for Eddie to talk. He starts by only talking to Billy, who he knows is dead, but still talks to him on his runs, and Billy’s dad. Together Eddie devises a plan. The plan isn’t revealed until the end. The plan was that he was going to speak at his baptism and when he speaks, he will talk about the book banning, and the way he doesn’t want the book to be banned. At the end of the speech, he says that he is Jesus, so they put him in a loony bin. The school board meeting is that night. All of the kids that agree with Eddie go and present, but there is one speaker that they don’t count on, the speaker is Chris Crutcher. In the end, Eddie gets out of the loony bin in time to see Chris Crutcher speak. The end of the book is that the books are banned, including a bunch of other books.
I think that this is one of the weirdest books that I have ever read. I wish that I would have picked a different book. This book was written like that Chris Crutcher had writers block. It also doesn’t have the content like my teacher said that it would have. This doesn’t really disappoint me, but it made the book all the more childish then the other books that I have heard that Chris Crutcher has written. All in all, the entire book was not that good, and I wish that I wouldn’t have read it.