29 October 2002 KING OF THE MILD FRONTIER: AN ILL-ADVISED AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Chris Crutcher, Greenwillow, April 2003

" 'Wanna do something neat?' are four words that strike terror in my heart to this day. My answer was always yes when the question came from my brother. Then he'd tell me what the neat thing was, and it would always seem not so neat until he explained how what seemed like something that could really get you in trouble was, in fact, neat. Then I'd get in trouble."

Chris Crutcher's outrageous tales of being a little brother, a young scholar, a doomed outdoorsman, and an athlete of questionable repute caused me to convulse with laughter to the point where my head started to hurt, and I began figuring that just one more story like the last one and I'd surely pee my pants.

And lying just below the surface of this wacky World According to Young Master Crutcher is a sparkling mine full of poignant vignettes and profound-yet-simple truths about a youngster coming to terms with God, with death, with family, with intolerance, and with his place in the world.

In KING OF THE MILD FRONTIER, Chris Crutcher goes on to talk from the heart about his idea of real heroes and reveals several brief (and heartbreaking) glimpses of his work as a child and family therapist. He gives us a look at his path to becoming a writer. By the time he's done, readers have a sense of how the experiences and revelations have melded together into those honest and gritty novels that we know and love him for, and which earned him the 2000 Margaret A. Edwards Award, honoring lifetime contribution in writing for teens.

Chris Crutcher is a consummate storyteller. He's also a guy who knows how to slice through the crap that authority figures often try feeding to kids. Those two hundred plus pages of KING OF THE MILD FRONTIER: AN ILL-ADVISED AUTOBIOGRAPHY passed by much too quickly for me. Teens will be certain to eat this book up in a hurry and rush out to meet all of those characters he's brought to life over the past two decades.

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com