CRAZY

Since his mother’s recent death, his mentally ill father, who tried to bury him alive at age six, has donned a homemade Spartan helmet as protection from mythological Furies, leaving 15-year-old Jason Papadopoulos feeling like he’s living a Greek tragedy. And the chorus consists of a cast of characters in his mind—a fat, balding movie critic, a kid who once Krazy Glued his fingers together, Sexy Lady (who always finds Jason hot), Aunt Bee from The Andy Griffith Show and his own laugh track—whose commentary punctuates his first-person narration throughout. In this distinct and effective blend of sorrow and humor, Jason, once invisible to his classmates and used to the chaos at home, suffers the effects of change when he’s enrolled in a lunch-hour group therapy with other wayward teens and his father is taken away. Wracked with guilt (why couldn’t he fix his parents?), grief (why did they abandon him?) and fear (do the voices in his head make him crazy too?), he slowly learns, with the help of his new friends and foster parents, normalcy and how to care for himself first. (Fiction. 12 & up)