MY BROTHER'S KEEPER by Patricia McCormick
Category: Contemporary
Age Recommendation: Grades 9+
Release Date: 9/15/06
Publisher: Hyperion
Reviewed by: Long Nguyen
Rating: 5 Stars
A brother's love is a brother's love: one of the many truths to life and family. In MY BROTHER'S KEEPER,
Patricia McCormick tells a sharp tale of the often too-complex relationships between brothers, and the
unspoken feelings and subtleties of such a fragile thing.
Toby idolizes his big brother Jake. Jake's the typical big brother figure; cool, funny, charming, and the school
baseball team stud. But things don't always turn out to be as great as they appear on the surface. Internally,
there are struggles. Toby's father has left their family to search his fortune elsewhere and has seemed to
cease all contact with them. His mother is distant and has taken a stance of resignation. And to complicate
the situation even more so, inevitably past Toby's endurance, Jake has fallen into a rut he cannot get out of.
The world of drugs.
Now Jake doesn't seem to be around as much anymore. He leaves the house, returning in the middle of the
night faded and disillusioned, leaving the responsibility up to Toby to clean things up, make everything seem
fine, and to smooth away the creases.
But when Jake finally goes too far, will it be up to Toby to decided how to handle things? Will he rat his
brother out, breaking the cardinal rule of the big-brother/little-brother relationship, trespassing on regions of
brotherhood Toby has never touched upon?
McCormick creates a completely believable and down-to-earth narrative of internal struggles in the mind of a
growing boy's problems in not only the broader family unit, but also the profound nuances of the complicated
structure of kinship between siblings. Not only that, but she manages to keep it lighthearted at the right
moments, as well as comedic at others.
Cheers to P.M.
Category: Contemporary
Age Recommendation: Grades 9+
Release Date: 9/15/06
Publisher: Hyperion
Reviewed by: Long Nguyen
Rating: 5 Stars
A brother's love is a brother's love: one of the many truths to life and family. In MY BROTHER'S KEEPER,
Patricia McCormick tells a sharp tale of the often too-complex relationships between brothers, and the
unspoken feelings and subtleties of such a fragile thing.
Toby idolizes his big brother Jake. Jake's the typical big brother figure; cool, funny, charming, and the school
baseball team stud. But things don't always turn out to be as great as they appear on the surface. Internally,
there are struggles. Toby's father has left their family to search his fortune elsewhere and has seemed to
cease all contact with them. His mother is distant and has taken a stance of resignation. And to complicate
the situation even more so, inevitably past Toby's endurance, Jake has fallen into a rut he cannot get out of.
The world of drugs.
Now Jake doesn't seem to be around as much anymore. He leaves the house, returning in the middle of the
night faded and disillusioned, leaving the responsibility up to Toby to clean things up, make everything seem
fine, and to smooth away the creases.
But when Jake finally goes too far, will it be up to Toby to decided how to handle things? Will he rat his
brother out, breaking the cardinal rule of the big-brother/little-brother relationship, trespassing on regions of
brotherhood Toby has never touched upon?
McCormick creates a completely believable and down-to-earth narrative of internal struggles in the mind of a
growing boy's problems in not only the broader family unit, but also the profound nuances of the complicated
structure of kinship between siblings. Not only that, but she manages to keep it lighthearted at the right
moments, as well as comedic at others.
Cheers to P.M.
My Brother's Keeper
by Patricia McCormick
by Patricia McCormick