Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life **1/2

By Wendy Mass.
Published 2006 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
Hachette Book Group.
1st Paperback edition 2008.

I put the website address of the publisher just for fun.  Don't know if it will really work.  I think I tried to put a link in previously in other entries and it didn't work.  I guess we'll find out.

Again, it's almost unfair to use the same rating system for kid books that I use for adults.  Becasue this is a much better book than most for young adults.  But as said before, young adult books rarely have the same profundity or nuance as adult books.  Neither do they have the same content as an adult book.  They just can't go there.  The last young adult book that I gave 3 or more stars was Alexie Sherman's  Part Time Indian (Not complete title)  That was aimed at high school kids and  had content that would not be appropriate for junior high kids - Sex , drugs domestic violence etc.  Sherman is also first and foremost, a novelist for adults.

So anyway, this book is about Jeremy Fink and his best friend Lizzy and their adventures over one summer.  The adventures start with Jeremy receiving a package in the mail.  It was from Jeremy's father who had passed away ten years previously.  It was sent by someone who was charged with the responsabilty of sending the box to Jeremy on his 23th birthday.  When it was opened, they found a wooden box with the keys missing.  Engraved on the box was the mesage that says the meaning of life is within.  But there are no keys, so Jeremy and Lizzy go searching for the keys and in one of their attempts, they run a foul of the law and end up having to serve community service.  An old rich man, who started his life as a pawnbroker, gave them jobs returning items to people that had pawned them long ago.  Jeremy and Lizzy meet these people, and each one of them sits down with them and discusses their own philosophy, or what life means to them.

I really liked how the novel is structured. Each visit is an opportunity to hear a different opinion of the meaning of life.  And the author gives the reader, and Jeremy, different types of philosphy.  Three to be exact.  One religious, one more new agey or spiritual and one more scientific.  It was very engrossing reading, though I wonder how my students from a low income community dealt with all those heady ideas.  They don't have a whole lot of experience with existentialism, or perhaps they do, seeing how difficult their lives are, but they haven't had these ideas articulated before.

And the characters are realistic and likeable.  Both have had tragedies in their lives which they are trying to cope with and the emotions seem real.  And there was some humor in the story as well as between stories.  The kids do, on some level, really behave like kids.

I was disappointed in the ending.  Without spoiling it, I'll just say that it seemed forced or too contrived (in fact part of the narrative is this contrivation).

Okay, here's a trailer for the book, just to give you a better idea of what it's about.  I know - Trailers for books!?!?!!?