Bookworm Speaks!- The Things a Brother Knows

Bookworm Speaks!

The Things A Brother Knows

by Dana Reinhardt

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Acquired: Amazon.com

Series: N/A

Hardcover: 256 Pages

Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books (September 14, 2010)

Language: English

Subject: Siblings / Children’s Book

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The Story: Finally, Levi Katznelson’s older brother, Boaz, has returned. Boaz was a high school star who had it all and gave it up to serve in a war Levi can’t understand. Things have been on hold since Boaz left. With the help of his two best friends Levi has fumbled his way through high school, weary of his role as little brother to the hero.

But when Boaz walks through the front door after his tour of duty is over, Levi knows there’s something wrong. Boaz is home, safe. But Levi knows that his brother is not the same.

Maybe things will never return to normal. Then Boaz leaves again, and this time Levi follows him, determined to understand who his brother was, who he has become, and how to bring him home again.

The Review: Bookworm will not lie. The first time they read this book in the library, they expected the final twist in this story to be Boaz coming home as a converted radical and he was on his way to commit a mass shooting or set off a bomb. The veterans who come home with half their body mass blown to pieces tend to get all the publicity but many come home with wounds of the mind if not the flesh. Such wounds can be just a harmful and much harder to tend to. Even though the reader may not like it, they can understand why Boaz comes home so messed up. As the book goes on, we slowly unravel the pieces of Boaz’s time abroad and slowly begin to realize what happen. The book does well in not revealing too much at once. We learn alongside Levi, looking over his shoulder as he treads through troubled brush.

The biggest problem with this book is the pacing. It is a very slow story. Admittedly, this a slow-paced story. A side effect of reading a lot of Science Fiction and Fantasy is that the readers becomes accustomed to reading pulse-pounding, action adventures. The author needs to be careful to ensure that slow-paced does not transform into boring. This especially matters considering that the primary audience for this novel is young adults.

What made Bookworm read this book to the end was its heart. While perusing its pages, the reader can truly feel Levi’s confusion over what happened to his brother. The cool, confident  soul that Levi had known was gone and replaced with a stranger. Home was become the foreign    land now and Boaz struggles with adapting to this strange new place.

In the end, the story is ultimately about Levi not Boaz. When his supposedly mature older brother returns from war broken, Levi is forced to step up and grow up in order to navigate this new paradigm. The roles between older sibling and younger sibling have reversed and Levi is unsure what to do. Even after he slowly begins to understand his bother a little better, nothing is tied up with a pretty bow. It remains a heartwarming tale though, because a central theme of this book is love. 

The Final Verdict: The endings that Bookworm predicted did not come to pass (thankfully) but the ending of this book remains bittersweet. In a lot of ways, it is the best kind of ending because it is also a beginning. There is still a long ways to go but the first steps have been taken. 

Always support your Veterans. 

Rating: Three Stars out of Five

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