The Speed of Light

by Ron Carlson

Book Overview

Witt and Raff and I have gone deep into physics and chemistry and electromagnetism and gravity and geology and magic and baseball in its thirty versions, and we have come out the other side. We have... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0380813122
• ISBN13: 9780380813124
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Harper Teen
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.9" x 7.4"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 and higher

Customer Reviews

Like it was

I confess that I have a bias in regard to this book. I grew up in the same neighborhood as Ron Carlson at the same time. He has captured the essence of what youth was like in the west side of Salt Lake City. I can't help but believe that he has captured the essence of life in many cities in the late '50s and early 60's. Narrated from the point of view of a sixth grader, he has recreated a community in which violence is subtly present at all times, yet not acknowledged by the powers of the community. It is a community in which 15% of those who graduate from high school were expected to graduate from college (and many didn't graduate from high school). At the same time he has profoundly presented the naive (innocent?) point of view of children who grow up in such a setting. I remember sleeping out and playing car baseball. Sorenson Park was my hangout in my junior high years, and I remember the bully who tried to take over the park. Miss Talbot was one of my teachers. Carlson has described it well, but the value of the book is not in mere nostalgia. His narration explores numerous themes of adolescence and the responsibility of adults to protect and teach them. Carlson's narration accurately reflects the emotions and thought processes of an adolescent in a working class neighborhood. At the same time he keeps the interest of the reader, who can't help but wonder what's going to happen next. In the last chapter, rather than tell us what happened to every character, he hints and tells us about the meaning of it all. This is a novel I will treasure for years.

The Pretty Sweet Book Review

This book is about normal kids who love the summer time. They count the days until school gets out and have the time of they're lives in the summer. They love to play baseball and make up all kinds of wacky games. My favorite part of the book is probobly when he's sitting with Karen on the swingset at the park and then he beats the crap out of Benny. This shows that he is maturing and learns how to stick up for himself and his brother. Benny and Cling have picked on kids for a long time and nobody has ever done anything about it. Finally they got taught a lesson. I would defianately recommend this book. It never really got boring and I'd just want to keep reading it. I felt like the characters in the book and I were alike. They liked the summer and liked playing baseball and so do I. This book wasn't very hard to read and it's just an interesting story. This is my book review.

All Growing up

I can?t believe there are not more people reading this book. This memoir of the summer between grade school and Jr. high is a classic. The all-star chapters about getting Rafferty voted an all-star, the ?baseball goggles,? and corking the bat are just some of the classic adventures of this part of adolescence. Don?t get the idea that there is just a fun summer of boyhood sleep outs in the book. The retrospective look at Witt, Rafferty, Larry and their families are a look into our own lives and the lives of those around us. It?s a heart jerking look at growing up with lots of laughs.

Carlson is excellent again

This novel may be considered a young adult work by some readers, but it's a young adult novel in the way that _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ or _To Kill a Mockingbird_ or _Great Expectations_ or any number of other books with young protagonists are. It's about 3 friends and their adventures over that strange, wonderous summer between eleven and twelve... That summer when suddenly the girls become interesting, and dancing is no long to be abjectly feared but possibly even sought out; when there are things in life that are slowly becoming more interesting than baseball or time travel. Carlson has always been excellent at portraying innocence lost and recapturing those whimsical moments of our youth (see "Plan B for the Working Class," "Oxygen," "Keith," to name a few of his stories), but this novel captures a time that most of us have shared in our life so perfectly that it's sad and sweet as nostalgia brewed into a heady and soft liquor. It's suitable for young adults, sure, but this book will do a lot more for grownups than Harry Potter novels ever will.