The Kryptonite Kid

by Joseph Torchia

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0030466768
• ISBN13: 9780030466762
• Release Date: January 1979
• Publisher: Holt McDougal
• Length: 178 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

awesome

I first read this book about 15 years ago, and have re-read it several times since. It should be recommended reading for every pubescent. An enlightening insight into childhood dreams, fantasy and reality. Heartbreaking, yet uplifting. Funny and sad. Essential!

Caught Up In Joseph?s World, Who Cares About Niggling Stuff?

Recently I sent a friend a photograph of me posed before the Golden Gate Bridge. He liked it and asked about it. I wrote that it had been taken, "on an outing in late December 1978. The photographer was a friend writing a book published the following year with a jacket quote from Pauline Kiel - "The Kryptonite Kid" by Joseph Torchia. He wrote one more, "As If After Sex". Both are brilliant, compelling."Hurried, I fired off the email even though niggling at my mind was the worry that I had misspelled the lady's name. I hate it when I do that. Perhaps my friend would never no-tice, or if he noticed much care, but it rubbed and chafed me until I left what I was doing and, scrambling through shelves of books undisturbed for years, found my copy of "The Kryptonite Kid," published in 1979, given to me by Joseph, the original jacket still in place.And lo, I had indeed misspelled it. Not that you really care, you and the rest of the world. You are thinking "Let it go, already!" Yeah, right, like that was really going to happen.A jacket quote from Pauline Kael was a literary rarity reserved to those new authors who had reached her and touched something primal. For an author like Joseph, talented, prom-ising, and undiscovered, it practically ensured a sold out first printing. Joseph had ar-rived. He was as giddy and bubbly as a fresh raspberry floating in a champagne flute when he called and told me. The quote was, "No other author has treated the effects of Pop mythology with such grace and feeling.""But Joseph," I said, "it has nothing to do with the book," which in fact it had not. I could palpably sense the champagne go flat and the raspberry stale. "I know," said a de-jected voice, "but it's Pauline Kael."Well, I admitted he had me there. Who would care? Joseph's reviewers would read the quote and open the book primed to acclaim it a fresh, serious, and powerful first literary effort from a talented new author. Joseph's readers would buy the book in no small part because of her name and her really cool sounding quote on the jacket cover.And then, they all would read. They would enter Joseph's world. Compelled, they would move where he pointed through that world, stopping now here, now there as his words directed, and - as helpless as sponges to prevent or interfere with or even slacken the pace of it - would soak up the beauty and the pathos, the grace and charm and ugliness, the beguiling serenity and the chaos it shrouded, and then move on again as he led them to the next and the next and the next appointed rendezvous with ephemeral insight. At the last, from the last word of the last sentence in the last paragraph of the last chapter, they would find themselves booted, ejected and expelled, from Joseph's world as emotionally wrecked, as broken and hopeless, and as forlorn, despairing, and defeated as at the last is his protagonist - a seven year old American schoolboy who believes as did most of us on our ways

An unforgettable book!

This story of an abused child who believes in, and writes letters to, Superman will have you laughing and crying, often simultaneously. I first read it fifteen years ago and have reread it several times since. Sometimes a rich fantasy life is the only thing that can get you through bad times, as this novel so beautifully illustrates. It is one of the most moving books I've ever read. When starting this book, you might get the impression it's light and fluffy. Don't be fooled; keep reading until the end. It will blow you away.

A powerful, moving story and a must read.

This book was given to me as a gift when I was a kid and I must have read it almost a dozen times. It is an engrossing story of a boy who believes in Superman and writes letters to him, letters which describe a troubled home life. It has been more than 12 years since I last read it, yet the story has stayed with me all this time. It is an absolute must read for young and old.