'WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN, ANYWAY?'

Gorged on an excess of radio drama, "Chet Barker, Master Spy" (a.k.a. sixth-grader Frankie Wattleston) drags "Skipper O'Malley" (Mario Calvino), his "faithful but brilliant sidekick," into a series of hilarious misadventures. Banished to the basement when his brother Tom returns, wounded and shell-shocked, from WW II, Frankie vows to get his room back by driving out the family boarder (a humorless medical student) and to introduce Torn to his luscious teacher—the very image, he thinks, of Veronica Lake. Reading this is like listening to an old radio show; interspersing episodes about the Green Hornet, Lone Ranger, and other masked heroes, Avi writes entirely in dialogue (a tricky device that succeeds here because each character has such a distinct voice), making for a breathless pace and rich, imaginative comedy. Despite setbacks—including literal and figurative skeletons in the closet—Frankie's schemes are wildly successful; and though he pays the price for his obsession with radio by being left hack, six months later he has his room back and a new sister-in-law. A characteristically multilayered tour-de-force (cf. Avi's 1992 Newbery honor book): an entertaining farce; an outspoken satire on the mesmerizing effects of the media; and a thought-provoking contrast between the heroic fantasies of a boy deprived of his busy parents' attention and the horrors of real war. (Fiction. 11-13)