Name: Twerp
ISBN: 9780375971426

Mark Goldblatt

In Queens, New York, in 1969, twelve-year-old Julian Twerski writes a journal for his English teacher in which he explores his friendships and how they are effected by girls, a new student who may be as fast as Julian, and especially an incident of bullying.

Twerp

Cindy Lee

More of my reviews at Secrets of Lost Words.

Rating: A-

I didn't think I would like Twerp. I don't usually like a lot of MG books so I'm really surprised at how much I liked this book. Twerp is something more mature for the younger audience and I feel like this fully explained Julian's life and how he worked through his problems.

From the start, you knew that Julian was involved in a bullying issue. That was the reason why the teacher wanted him to write his story. This book reminded a lot of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. That book was more of a light read while this one is more serious but also fun at the same time. I really enjoyed reading about Julian's adventures, problems, hopes and dreams.

The best part about this book are the characters. Julian was a great narrator and the author often incorporated Julian's feelings into what was happening. Every character (Lonnie, Educardo, Shlomo Shlomo) were distinct characters that had their own personality. Educardo was one of my favorites as he was Spanish and was humble even though he was good at a lot of things. Lonnie was something of his own. He was a devious kid and had a way of manipulating all his friends. I really connected with characters as I found a bit of my childhood (not as crazy as the story, of course) in bits and pieces of Julian's misadventures.

The situation for bullying wasn't included much throughout the book. We only got to know what happened at the end and what they did to resolve the problem. I feel like all kids were bullied at some point in their lives so it's a shame this book didn't focus more on that issue.

This book did take a while for me to get into but once I was enjoying myself, I kept turning the pages until I realized there was no more.

Overall, Twerp was a great MG books I thoroughly enjoyed. Julian's adventures, problems, hopes, and dreams was what made this book come alive and made this such a fun book to read.

P. S. Now I got what the cover means!

Twerp

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