UNCLE DADDY

When Rivers was three, his father went out to get a pizza and never returned. Now in fourth grade, Rivers does a lot of fantasizing about what he’d do if his father came back—“I’d wind up and sock him as hard as I could, right in the stomach.” But when his fantasy becomes a reality, the situation stirs up far more ambiguous and confusing emotions than Rivers had anticipated. Since his father’s disappearance, his too-good-to-be-alive great uncle (whom he calls Uncle Daddy) has filled the role of dad in Rivers’s household. Despite the protagonist’s amusingly rendered, emotionally justified anger toward his biological father, it’s clear to the reader that Rivers does want to have a relationship with him, but is afraid this relationship will impinge upon the emotional connection he has with Uncle Daddy. Unwilling to trust the small, telling details of this tender tale, Fletcher conjures up a dramatic incident: Uncle Daddy suffers a near-fatal heart attack. This predictably forces River and his mother to depend on Rivers’s biological father, whose expertise in the building trades—he helps build Uncle Daddy a downstairs bedroom so that the family won’t have to constantly navigate the stairs—not only saves the day but shows off his newfound sense of responsibility as well. Despite this obvious gimmick, Fletcher is often insightful and his protagonist funny and winning. In this age of step and other nontraditional family groupings, the story should reassure youngsters that it’s okay to love two father figures at the same time. (Fiction. 8-11)