Borderline

By Bonnie Rozanski

Presents a story of a normal boy in a crazy world - a fast-paced world of high-tech gismos, global air travel and antibiotics, a world in which high schools have replaced cafeterias with fast food... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0889842930
• ISBN13: 9780889842939
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Porcupine's Quill
• Length: 205 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 8.7"
• Age Range: 10 to 13 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 8

Customer Reviews

Timely and Timeless

Classified as "juvenile fiction," Bonnie Rozanski's Borderline is a stimulating read for adults as well as adolescents. Rozanki is both witty and erudite, and she knows how to tell a good story. Avoiding the easy sentiment, caricatured portrayals, and reductive lessons (or pseudo-hip cynicism) that so often afflict "young-adult" literature, she has crafted an engaging and suspenseful tale while prompting reflection on philosophical questions of ethics, identity, and even the very nature of humanity. As she did with Banana Kiss (also highly recommended), the author has conjured an entirely persuasive narrator--in this case, Guy Ritter, the 12-year-old brother of a little boy who has been diagnosed with autism--with whom readers of all ages will find more in common than they at first imagine. Like the award-winning novels of Mark Haddon and E.L. Konigsburg, this compelling story addresses timely--and timeless--issues in ways both adolescents and adults can appreciate because the writer respects her readers and refuses to pander to them. She also knows how to be very funny, allowing her readers to share inside jokes and wry observations with the perceptive but entirely believable Guy. As the title indicates, Rozanski wants us to reconsider where and why we draw the boundaries in our construction of the worlds we inhabit, both natural and social. I especially applaud her fearless and honest embrace of provocative scientific questions that are too often reduced in the media to simplistic formulas calculated to reassure or to alarm. Rozanski convincingly dramatizes such issues as the interactivity of genes and environment in all their nuance and uncertainty, seamlessly informing her narrative with fascinating information that unsettles even as it illuminates. Rest assured there is no pedantry or didacticism here; above all, this story nurtures an empathetic imagination by prodding its readers, as the best fiction generally does, to confront their own hidden motives and peel back rationalizations that are the armor of everyday life. Not coincidentally, Borderline is also a profound commentary on the meaning of friendship, brotherhood (literal and metaphoric) and integrity of self. As the story progresses, we learn not only about Guy but with him. (Think of a pubescent Holden Caulfield.) Rozanski's deft modulation of point-of-view--maintaining a productive tension between our identification with Guy and our recognition that he is only a kid after all--is deep and satisfying. The book's climactic scene manages to bring all the threads of the story together without seeming at all contrived or lapsing into unearned feel-good moments. The critical questions raised by this book could be fruitfully discussed at different levels of sophistication in junior-high, high-school, or college classrooms. Borderline would also make a great reading-club selection for both parents and their maturing children. Or you could just treat yourself to a richly laye

Hungry like the wolf

This young adult novel manages to cover a lot of difficult territory without being either preachy or patronizing. First of all, there's Guy, who's just turned thirteen, and is facing not only the challenges of growing up, but also the additional pressure of having an autistic younger brother. Guy comes from a nuclear family unit, but his mother's attention is diverted to his brother Austin, and his father seems to care more about his laboratory experiments seeking the truth about wolves and dogs. To quote the Madonna song with the same title as this book: "Borderline feels like I'm going to lose my mind You just keep on pushing my love over the borderline" Predictably, Guy isn't doing too well at school, as he's having difficulty concentrating, and becomes increasingly distracted by the issues at home. Things get even more tense when his mother enrolls Austin in a special programme that uses somewhat unorthodox methods to reach autistic children, as this goes against the scientific beliefs of his father. Neither parent realizes the stress that Guy is operating under, and his only confidante is his best friend Matt, who also has a lot on his plate, both literally and figuratively. Matt's parents have recently divorced after his mother left home, and his father has a new girlfriend, an ex-waitress, whom he intends to marry. Both Matt and his father are great fans of fast food, and neither is fond of exercise or saying no to supersizing. During a visit to his father's office, Guy becomes attached to a laboratory animal that is more wolf than dog, and against everyone's better judgment, the two form an unlikely alliance. The final straw comes when the wolf's natural instincts take over, and the animal is judged to be unsuitable for the purposes of the experiment. Written in appropriate language for the intended audience, the author skillfully handles the difficult issues of adolescence, autism, obesity, divorce, parental disputes and more, throwing in just enough adventure, classroom hi-jinks and teenage rebelliousness to make it all gel together in a fast paced easy to read package. Highly recommended. Amanda Richards, October 7, 2007

A Very Important New Novel about the Eccentricities of our Society

BORDERLINE is a book that works on so many levels that it is almost unclassifiable. It is a genuinely warm, tender, humorous coming of age story while at the same time being a novel that is smart, informative and illuminating in the fields of genetics, autism as an increasingly proliferating condition, fast food and obesity as national crises, and the overemphasis of pill-popping for invented childhood and adult disorders. Sounds like too much information to compress into one book? Not in the deft hands of author Bonnie Rozanski! For all of the intelligent and interesting information the book contains, the story itself is an amazingly fresh novel, written with great style and sensitivity, a novel than will appeal to just about everyone no matter the age group. Guy Ritter is a twelve-year-old son of a geneticist father, an activist mother, and Guy happens to have a five-year-old brother Austin who is an autistic child. Guy feels extraneous in this family whose focus is on controlling autistic Austin, he has little tolerance for school, and finds some consolation in his obese best friend Matt. Guy's father runs a lab of genetics research, the current project being how to breed wolves to become like docile dogs, and when Guy is finally invited into his father's work life, Guy falls in love with animal # JX104 whom he gradually wins over as a friend and changes his scientific name to 'Wolf' - his new best friend. Guy's life is complicated by his mother's blind devotion to autistic Austin (she is convinced the autism is due to a vaccination!), by Matt's broken home and Matt's grossly obese father who is addicted to junk food from Hamburger Haven (a habit that results in a crisis), and by a distant father whose concerns are dedicated to his scientific work which nearly excludes Guy from existence. The story builds very coherently with mounting tensions on multiple levels (each level a significantly important social malady) until Guy coerces Matt into freeing the soon to be exterminated Wolf from his father's lab of cages. Then with the unexpected help of Austin and the courage to do what is 'right', a completely new beginning to Guy's dissociative life comes into focus. It is the manner in which Rozanski relates her story - through the eyes and experiences and perceptions of a 12 to 13 year-old boy that makes this a novel of consuming interest. It is beautifully constructed, insightful, sensitive, and entertaining, all the while addressing many issues that are puzzling the public today. It has all the earmarks of a lasting and successful novel. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, September 07

Another mesmerizing book from novelist, Bonnie Rozanski

As she did with Banana Kiss, novelist Rozanski drew me into the story of Borderline, so much so that I didn't want the book to end. Guy is an average pre-teen/teenager, dealing with the normal pangs of growing up. What's different for him, however, is that his younger brother Austin has autism (or to quote Guy's naïve interpretation, "austinism") and Guy has become an invisible member of his family. Surprisingly sensitive, Guy develops a friendship with a wolf at his father's lab, claiming he has done so because he knows the wolf needs him and doesn't have anyone else - mirroring Guy's own experiences thus far. The reader is provided with the opportunity to live Guy's life from his eyes, seeing what he sees, and experiencing what he feels. I was most enthralled by the link between autism and the work that Guy's father does at his lab, especially the exploration of environmental changes and its impact on behavior. I was also intrigued by Guy's parents and how they each dealt with Austin's autism. Guy's best buddy Matt and the doctor who ultimately brings Austin out of his shell were other very compelling characters. Rozanski's second novel is as magnetic as her first. I highly recommend Borderline for adults and teenagers alike.