eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
An award-winning writer and playwright hits the open road for a searing novel-in-letters about a street kid on a highstakes trek across America.
For a runaway boy who goes by the name "Punkzilla," kicking a meth habit and a life of petty crime in Portland, Oregon, is a prelude to a mission: reconnecting with his older brother, a gay man dying of cancer in Memphis. Against a backdrop of seedy motels, dicey bus stations, and hitched rides, the desperate fourteen-year-old meets a colorful, sometimes dangerous cast of characters. And in letters to his sibling, he catalogs them all -- from an abusive stranger and a ghostly girl to a kind transsexual and an old woman with an oozing eye. The language is raw and revealing, crackling with visceral details and dark humor, yet with each interstate exit Punkzilla’s journey grows more urgent: will he make it to Tennessee in time? This daring novel offers a narrative worthy of Kerouac and a keen insight into the power of chance encounters.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780763652586 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Candlewick Press |
| Publication date: | 03/16/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Lexile: | 1200L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 784 KB |
| Age Range: | 14 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Adam Rapp says that when he was working on his chilling, compulsively readable young adult novel 33 Snowfish, he was haunted by several questions. Among them: When we have nowhere to go, who do we turn to? Why are we sometimes drawn to those who are deeply troubled? How far do we have to run before we find new possibilities?
At once harrowing and hypnotic, 33 Snowfish—which was nominated as a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association—follows three troubled young people on the run in a stolen car with a kidnapped baby in tow. With the language of the street and lyrical prose, Adam Rapp hurtles the reader into the world of lost children, a world that is not for the faint of heart. His narration captures the voices of two damaged souls (a third speaks only through drawings) to tell a story of alienation, deprivation, and ultimately, the saving power of compassion. “For those readers who are ready to be challenged by a serious work of shockingly realistic fiction,” notes School Library Journal, “it invites both an emotional and intellectual response, and begs to be discussed.”
Adam Rapp’s first novel, Missing The Piano, was named a Best Book for Young Adults as well as a Best Book for Reluctant Readers by the American Library Association. His subsequent titles include The Buffalo Tree, The Copper Elephant, and Little Chicago, which was chosen as a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. The author’s raw, stream-of-consciousness writing style has earned him critical acclaim. “Rapp’s prose is powerful, graphic, and haunting,” says School Library Journal. “[He] writes in an earthy but adept language,” says Kirkus Reviews. “Takes a mesmerizing hold on the reader,” adds The Horn Book magazine.
Adam Rapp’s other novels include the 2010 Michael L. Printz Honor Book Punzilla, as well as The Children and the Wolves.
In addition to being a novelist, Adam Rapp is also an accomplished and award-winning playwright. His plays—including Nocturne, Animals And Plants, Blackbird, and Stone Cold Dead Serious—have been produced by the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the New York Theatre Workshop, and the Bush Theatre in London, among other venues.
Born and raised in Chicago, the novelist and playwright now lives in New York City.
Read an Excerpt
March 4, 2008
Dear P,
Hey.
I'm finally writing you back. I've been carrying your letter around in my pocket so it's pretty wrinkled but you have good penmanship or cursive or whatever they call it so it's still totally readable. It actually looks like Mom's writing and I never knew that about you.
I've been meaning to write back for like weeks I swear P but every time I started to do it I would get distracted like I'd have some shit to do or I couldn't find a pen or something. I've never been much of a writer anyway even though this one time in seventh grade I was in detention for skipping class and I had to do this five hundred word essay on politeness and after she read my essay the woman who was running detention this substitute teacher everyone called Mrs. Boobjob told me I had an unusual gift. She wound up giving my essay to this English teacher Mr. Douglas-Roberts and he invited me into a special composition class but I got kicked out right away for chirping like a bird during this thing called an automatic writing exercise. I haven't really written anything for a while so I hope this letter doesn't suck too bad.
So I'm on a Greyhound bus and the driver's wearing a hockey mask. It's clear instead of white and you can see his skin all slimy and pressed up against the mask. When I got on he said hello and his voice was clogged and small. I think he has some sort of infection on his face and I can't tell if he's black or Mexican.
I'm wearing this hoodie I found the other day and I wish I had something a little warmer. Man I feel like shit. I have the chills and I should've eaten something but I'll have to wait for the next refueling point which the driver said would be somewhere in Idaho.
P I've been living in Portland for five months and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I probably won't really know for years because that's how it works right? You don't really develop feelings about a place till you've left it. It's like a girl or a dog like that black Lab E brought home after his pony league game that dog Sarge. Remember how Mom accidentally backed over him with the Olds and how you said he made that squealing sound? I miss that dog even though he only lived with us for a summer. Remember how you used to do that trick where you would put extracrunchy peanut butter on the sprinkler in the front yard and he would start licking the peanut butter off and then you would turn on the sprinkler and he wouldn't stop even though the water was shooting everywhere and he would flip his weird spotted tongue around all crazy and then you would do the fake Fifty Cent voice and it would be like Sarge was really busting rhymes or something.
To be honest I've never really had a girlfriend to miss. I've gotten off here and there but I'm basically talking about hand jobs. I don't mean to be weird P but in your letter you said how you wanted the truth about stuff even if it's ugly and trust me it's going to get a little ugly. Uglier than my skittery penmanship if skittery is even a word.
I can still feel the effects of the meth that me and this kid Branson did last night. It was my first time trying it and it made everything taste aluminum so I didn't feel like eating anything and now I'm totally fucking starving but I already said that right? To be honest P I'm so nervous I can practically feel my bones rattling around under my skin.
The bus smells pretty bad like mold and breath and piss from the bathroom and disinfectant they used to try to cover it up and the back of the seat in front of me has a sticker on it that says jobops.com which is somehow making the smells worse. Out my window the sky is so dark it's almost brown like a bunch of German shepherds got stuck up there. I imagine them snarling and baring their yellow teeth at this shit world and all of its disappointments. That's pretty much all I can see the sickly sky and rain streaking slantways across the glass and the Rose Garden shrinking in the distance like a lost toy.
There are only about eight people on board and six of them look like they're sleeping with their eyes open. This man three seats in front of me is snoring so loud it sounds like he's drowning in a birdbath and this old black woman keeps crying into an Easter basket. I don't even know when Easter is. Maybe she just likes carrying around Easter baskets. She probably had something in it that she lost like some money or a picture of her dead pet. She's wearing a pink shower cap with little yellow daisies on it and she's sitting about four rows in front of me and her crying almost sounds like Santa Claus laughter. Even though it's March I keep thinking she's going to turn around and scream "Merry Christmas foolish-ass bitches!" like she's been saving up all her sorrow and hatred and this skanky bus is the only place she can let it out.
Man I wish I had that iPod Fat Larkin gave me. I wound up giving it to Branson. He's the guy I did meth with last night. He was my best friend in Portland and the one I will miss the most.
I stole about fifty iPods for Fat Larkin. Me and this kid Bobby Job were Fat Larkin's iPod thieves. Bobby Job has emotional problems and likes to stick mechanical pencils in cats' anuses especially this one cat called Acrocat who sounded like a dental drill when it meowed. The emaciated thing followed Bobby Job around with pure loyalty because he would feed it Popeye's. Bobby Job wound up getting his face bit up by a Doberman pinscher and got sent to the Yakima juvy home up in Washington.