Invisible Lines by Mary Amato Review

Book: Invisible Lines

Author: Mary Amato

Age: Middle Grade

Copy From: Publisher

Summary:

For Trevor Musgrove, life isn't always bright and cheerful. His family has just moved to Hedley Gardens, a tough housing project it's residents call "Deadly Gardens." He goes to school with rich kids who have everything, while he has to work just to afford soccer cleats. It doesn't help that the best athlete in school, Xander Pierce, happens to have it out for him. Mistakenly enrolled in an advanced science class taught by an odd but engaging teacher, Trevor is thrown headfirst into the world of natural science. Through all this, he will learn that life can spring up in the darkest places--maybe even Deadly Gardens.

Review: When Trevor moves to Deadly Gardens, it's the last place he wants to be. But school isn't that bad, when he befriends two of the most popular boys in his class, Langly and Xander. He also befriends a few other students. Everything seems to be going Trev's way, until his soccer skills puts him on Xander's bad side.

Trevor's just like any other kid, he wants to fit in. It's a little bit harder though, because his mother is struggling to make ends meet, especially when she has three kids. Trev is loving school, though, especially his Summit Science class, with the kooky Mr. Ferguson. The characters are written perfectly (I could honestly see some resemblences to people I went to school with).

This novel makes me breathe a sigh of relief that novels with a good message are being written for kids/pre-teens. I know when I wish in the Middle Grade stage, I just read YA because I felt that I was getting more than I was from the MG novels I read back in the day.

Highlights: Invisible Lines really dives into a few topics that most MG novels would shy away from. Violence, theft, and abandonment. It was interesting to see Trevor's reaction to all of these as the story unwound. Mary Amato really captured Trevor's voice in this story, and I felt connected to him.

Also, the journal entries were fun to read and the art is beautiful. Trevor's love for art and soccer was endearing, and nice to read about.

Lowlights: Trevor's ambition to fit in. It just had me cringing throughout the story. Also, I felt I knew the end result when I was only fifty pages in (which might be due to the fact that I've read so many stories).

Rating:   

-Lea