The Keeper

The Keeper. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
This is a story about a middle school boy, Nick, coming to terms with his mentally ill father. The story is written from Nick’s point of view. Like Nick any adolescent will relate to his life-long desire to be a member of a team, his deep need and struggles to blend in with his peers- to fit in, and hid awful longing for a dad to share things with, and much more. This team that Nick is trying to get on is the baseball team and the reason that he longs to make the baseball team is to prove to his father that he can do anything that he wants to do if he works hard enough for it, the main reason that he wants to prove this to his father was because his father never worked for anything therefore he had nothing. Nick did not want to live the kind of lifestyle that his dad did and so Nick was always willing to work for whatever he got. I think that this book is for young adults. I did not personally like this book mainly because I like to read nonfiction books. I did not like the story that was behind this book as well. I think that this book would be interesting for young adults who like fiction books. The plot was very hard to understand because the person’s point of view kept on changing throughout the story, mainly in the plot. It would be a good book for a young reader to read on the side but I would not recommend this book to anyone to use for a report. This book was sad because Nick’s father could not support Nick because he did not have enough work ethic about himself to try to get a job.
On a scale 1-10, I give this book a 4.
Reviewed by Clayton.