Kid Konnection - Review of “Liar & Spy” by Rebecca Stead

As Young Adult books get more accepted by Older Adults, the Middle Grade market is becoming the place to go for under-appreciated books that fabulously capture a time and place in our personal evolutions.

At first I was a bit leery of Liar & Spy: I wasn’t crazy about Stead’s previous book When You Reach Me, and I was afraid this one would be about bullying and/or family heartbreak, either one of which can make me run for cover. But actually, this turned out to be a super book about the triumph of a young boy who isn’t invited to the “cool table” in the cafeteria, but who manages to turn the tables and redefine “cool” in the absolute best way I can imagine.

Georges suffers for his name. The S is silent – he got his name from his parents’ love of the impressionist painter Georges Seurat – but he is often the butt of jokes and harassment. Yet he keeps it all in perspective, just like his mom encouraged him to do by teaching him about Seurat. Seurat was a pioneer in the post-impressionist technique of pointillism, using small dots of color to form images. The viewer blends the colors optically to see the picture. As Georges explains:

Mom says that our Seurat poster reminds her to look at the big picture. Like when it hurts to think about selling the house, she tells herself how that bad feeling is just one dot in the giant Seurat painting of our lives.”

Seurat’s 1884 pointillist masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Georges is a veritable master of positive thinking, no matter what mind games he has to play to get there. What with his dad laid off, his mom working extra hours, having to sell their house and move into a small apartment, and being confronted by bullies at school, he has plenty of material with which to work. At first he thinks everything will be okay when he is practically adopted by his nice but eccentric new neighbors. But when the boy – Safer – who is Georges’s age, turns out to be not what he seems, Georges is at the end of his rope. He’s so sick of games!

Only after looking into his own heart and mind, reflected through the mirror of Safer and his kid sister Candy, does Georges come to realize that he has been focusing on the big picture so much he hasn’t paid enough attention to the dots. As his dad explains to him, the dots matter too! And Georges finally figures out a way to cope with it all. Because who says everyone has to be the same? Who says the status quo gets to decide what the rules should be? And who says zooming in to pay attention to details won’t help you get to that big picture in the long run?

Evaluation: The characterizations in this book are terrific. You won’t doubt for a moment the voices of the 12-year-olds, the 10-year-old, and even the adults in this heart-warming story.

Rating: 4/5

Published by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 2012

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For more reviews of books for children and teens, go to Booking Mama’s feature, Kid Konnection, posted on Saturdays. If you’d like to participate in Kid Konnection and share a post about anything related to children’s books (picture, middle grade, or young adult) from the past week, leave a comment as well as a link on her site.

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