THE LAST SUMMER OF THE DEATH WARRIORS (Arthur A. Levine Scholastic, March 2010)
Some Reviews
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/books/review/Fried2-t.html?ref=books
Starred – The Horn Book March/April 2010
Following his breakout book, Marcelo in the Real World (rev. 3/09), Stork offers yet another story with complex characters, rich and powerful themes, and a vivid setting. Tough-guy Pancho Sanchez is a ward of the state of New Mexico: his father died in an accident and his “slow” older sister, Rosa, died in a motel room under mysterious circumstances. Pancho is convinced that she was murdered and lives to take vengeance on his sister’s killer. Pancho is placed first in a foster home and then in an orphanage, where he meets and befriends D.Q., a strange boy with terminal cancer. D.Q. is writing the Death Warrior Manifesto, outlining his philosophy of embracing and loving life. He senses a kindred spirit in Pancho and recruits him to accompany him on an extended trip to Albuquerque for experimental treatment, hoping to mitigate Pancho’s lust for revenge. Once there, Pancho works on tracking down Rosa’s murderer, but he also bonds more closely with D.Q. and Marisol, a girl both Pancho and D.Q. fall for. Ultimately, Pancho needs to decide whether to cling to his desire for vengeance or forsake that quest, embrace forgiveness and acceptance, and move on with his life. Perceptive readers will not fail to recognize the allusions to Don Quixote in this novel of lonely quests and unlikely friendship. Stork’s latest marks him as one of the most promising young adult authors of the new decade; it features unforgettable characters confronting the big philosophical questions in life that will resonate with readers long after book’s end.
Starred - Publishers Weekly February 2010
Characters that are just as fully formed and memorable as in Stork’s Marcelo in the Real World embody this openhearted, sapient novel about finding authentic faith and choosing higher love. Seventeen-year-old Pancho Sanchez is sent to a Catholic orphanage after his father and sister die in the span of a few months. Though the cause of his sister’s death is technically “undetermined,” Pancho plans to kill the man he believes responsible (“How strange that a feeling once so foreign to him now gripped him with such persistence. He could not imagine living without avenging his sister’s death”). When D.Q., a fellow resident dying from brain cancer, asks Pancho to accompany him to Albuquerque for experimental treatments, Pancho agrees—he’ll get paid and it’s where his sister’s killer lives.
D.Q. is deeply philosophical, composing a “Death Warrior” manifesto about living purposefully; through him, Pancho gradually opens to a world that he previously approached like a punching bag. Stork weaves racial and familial tension, tentative romances, and themes of responsibility and belief through the story, as the boys unite over the need to determine the course of their lives.
Starred – Booklist February 2010
Though the police say that his sister, Rosa, died of natural causes, 17-year-old Pancho Sanchez is convinced she was murdered, and looking to exact revenge. With no surviving family (his mother died when he was five, and his father only three months before Rosa), Pancho is placed in an orphanage in Las Cruces, where he meets D.Q., a boy who is dying from a rare form of brain cancer. D.Q. is not just determined to find a cure, he’s also equally set on training Pancho to become what he calls a “Death Warrior.” Together, the unlikely companions embark on a quest to Albuquerque (Stork acknowledges echoes of Don Quixote here), and though they travel for their own reasons, once arrived, each will have to come to terms with what it might actually mean to be a Death Warrior. Stork (Marcelo in the Real World, 2008) has written another ambitious portrait of a complex teen, one that investigates the large considerations of life and death, love and hate, and faith and doubt. Though the writing occasionally tends toward the didactic, this novel, in the way of the best literary fiction, is an invitation to careful reading that rewards serious analysis and discussion. Thoughtful readers will be delighted by both the challenge and Stork’s respect for their abilities.MARCELO IN THE REAL WORLD (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic, March 1, 2009)
2010 Once Upon a World Children's Book Award for Young Adults (Awarded by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance Library and Archives)
Schneider Family Book Award (January 2010) (Awarded by the American Library Association for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences).
New York Times Notable Children's Book of 2009
Washington Post Best Kids' Books of the Year
Smithsonian Notable Book of 2009
A YALSA Best Book for Young Adults, 2010
YALSA Top 10 Best Books for Young Adults, 2010
NPR.org Best Young Adult Fiction for 2009
2009 Booklist Editors' Choice
Horn Book Fanfare Book
Kirkus Best Book of 2009
Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2009
School Library Journal Best Book of 2009
CBC/NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2010
2010 IRA Notable Books for a Global Society
Some Reviews:
New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/books/review/Lipsyte-t.html
Starred - Booklist - April 1, 2009
Seventeen-year-old Marcelo is on the very high-functioning end of the autsim spectrum. He prefers an ordered existence, which includes taking care of the ponies at Paterson, his special school, reading religious books, and listening to the music in his head. Then his father, a high-powered attorney, insists that Marcelo spend the summer working in his law firm. If he does his best, marcelo will be given the choice of returning to Paterson or being mainstreamed. After finding a photo of a disfigured girl injured by the negligence of his father's biggest client, Marcelo must decide whther to follow his conscience and try to right the wrong, even as he realizes that decision will bring irrevocable changes to his life and his relationship with his father. That story alone would be thougth-provoking, but Stork offers much, much more. Readers are invited inside Marcelo's head, where thoughts are so diferently processed, one coan almost feel them stretch and twist as the summer progresses and Marcelo changes. Much of the impetus for change comes from his relationship with his mailroom boss, Jasmine. In a chapter near the end, Jasmine takes Marcelo to the family farm in Vermont, where he meets her raunchy father. It's a scene many writers wouldn't have bothered with, but the layers it adds mark stork as a true storyteller. Shot with spiritualism, laced with love, and fraught with conundrums, this book, like Marcelo himself, surprises.
Starred - School Library Journal - Mar. 2009
Gr. 8 Up - Like Christopher Boone, the protagonist in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Doubleday,2003), Marcelo Sandoval is a high-functioning, extremely self-aware teenager with Asperger's syndrome. He has an empathetic mother and a father, Arturo, who appears to be less empathetic as he pushes Marcelo to live in the "real world." The form the real world takes is a summer job in the mailroom at Arturo's law office. The teen is forced to think on his feet, multitask, and deal with dupllicitous people who try to take advantage of him. Over the course of a summer, Marcelo learns that he can function in society; he is especially surprised to find that he can learn to read people's expressions, even to the point of knowing whom he can and cannot trust. Writing in the first-person narrative, Strok does an amazing job of entering Marcelo's consciousness and presenting him as a dynamic, sympathetic, and wholly believable character. At a little over 300 pages, the story drags at some points, bogging down in the middle. However, the dilemmas that Marcelo faces are told in a compelling fashion, which helps to keep readers engaged.
Starred - Horn Book - March/April, 2009
Seventeen-year-old Marcelo Sandoval marches to the beat of a different drummer - literally. He perceives internal music in his head; he is obsessed with religion; he has difficulty interacting with others - behaviors that place him at the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. He is happy at Paterson, the special-education school he's attended since first grade, and life is comfortable. Then his father proposes an unwelcome deal: if Marcelo proves successful in "the real world" by working in the mailroom at his law firm over the summer he will be allowed to choose between returning to his beloved Paterson or attending - as his father prefers - a regular high school. But as Marcelo begins his summer job, he finds his moral compass tested just as much as his coping and social skills. His loyalty is divided on multiple levels: between his father and the law firm, between a plaintiff and the law firm, between the privileged son of his father's law partner who befriends him with dubious motives and the beautiful co-worker who gradually comes to care deeply for him. While the voice is reminiscent of the narrator of Haddon's Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - both have an appealing blend of naivete and wisdom - Marcelo has the superior character development. His inspiring, brave journey into the real world will likely engender a fierce protective instinct in readers, ratcheting up the tension as the plot winds to its sweet, satisfying denouement. It is the rare novel that reaffirms a belief in goodness;rarer still is one that does so this emphatically. j.h.
Starred – Publisher’s Weekly January 2009
Artfully crafted characters form the heart of Stork's (The Way of the Jaguar) judicious novel. Marcelo Sandoval, a 17-year-old with an Asperger's-like condition, has arranged a job caring for ponies at his special school's therapeutic-riding stables. But he is forced to exit his comfort zone when his high-powered father steers Marcelo to work in his law firm's mailroom (in return, Marcelo can decide whether to stay in special ed, as he prefers, or be mainstreamed for his senior year).Narrating with characteristically flat inflections and frequently forgetting to use the first person, Marcelo manifests his anomalies: heharbors an obsession with religion (he regularly meets with a plainspoken female rabbi, though he's not Jewish); hears "internal "music; and sleeps in a tree house. Readers enter his private world as he navigates the unfamiliar realm of menial tasks and office politics with the ingenuity of a child, his voice never straying from authenticity even as the summer strips away some of his differences. Stork introduces ethical dilemmas, the possibility of love, and other "real world" conflicts, all the while preserving the integrity of his characterizations and intensifying the novel's psychological and emotional stakes. Not to be missed. Ages 14-up. (Mar.)
Starred - Kirkus Reviews – Jan 15, 2009
In what turns out to be considerably more than just another tale told byan intelligent narrator with a spectrum disorder, 17-year-old Marcelo Sandoval gets a life-changing taste of the "real world" when he's forced to take a summer job in his father's law firm. Comfortable with his limitations but still anxious, Marcelo strikes gold immediately whenJasmine, his supervisor in the Mail Room, turns out to be an uncommonly perceptive young woman-unlike Wendell, the sex-obsessed son of his father's slimeball legal partner. Vicious office intrigues, Marcelo's long-standing fascination with religious thought and his discovery of a damning piece of suppressed evidence in a case involving his father's biggest corporate client all lead to a series of short but deep heart-to-heart conversations about ethics, God's will and other big questions. In the end Marcelo keeps his feet amid strong emotional currents, makes the hard choices and even maps out a personal future that wasn't at all clear earlier on. Making good on the promise of his Way of the Jaguar (2000), Stork delivers a powerful tale populated by appealing (and decidedly unappealing) characters and rich in emotional nuance. (Fiction. YA)
Other Good News About Marcelo:
So far (as of February 14, 2010) Marcelo will be published in sixteen languages: Spanish, Catalan, Italian, French, German, Dutch, Greek, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Vietnamese, Slovak, Korean, Hungarian, Chinese Simplified, Turkish and Hebrew.
My favorite comment on the book:
