Jan Lieberman (Children's Literature)
The author has created a story with so many rich, tender, and hilarious moments that it is easy to believe that the family and events are real. Kenny, 10, tells the story. Kenny's description of brother Byron's antics leaves little doubt that this 13-year-old is on his way to being an "official delinquent." He is the cause of the family's decision to visit Birmingham to leave him with his maternal grandmother. The trip itself is a hoot as Dad decides to save money by making it a non-stop trip from Flint, Michigan. In Birmingham they are soon caught in the maelstrom of events of the emerging Civil Rights Movement. The spectrum of emotions from comedy to tragedy make this a worthy Newbery Honor Book, 1996. 1995, Delacorte, $14.95 and $4.99. Ages 9 up.

Victoria Crenson (Children's Literature)
The story of the Weird Watson family of Flint, Michigan, as told by ten-year-old Kenny Watson, is achingly funny. Kenny's is a middle-child's view--wrapped in the warm presence of his quirky family and yet in many ways, feeling like an alien. The escapades of older brother Byron, the tormenter, also known as the Lipless Wonder after he kisses his reflection in a frozen car mirror and must be forcibly unstuck, will have readers rolling on the floor. (The author clearly understands the edgy, love-hate feelings that tie siblings to each other for a lifetime.) Kenny's story is also a heartbreaking look at one child's attempt to cope with a crisis of spirit after a shattering event in Birmingham. In his first novel, Curtis has created a voice of extraordinary force. 1995, Delacorte, $14.95 and $4.99. Ages 9 up.

Susie Wilde (Children's Literature)
This is our favorite read-aloud this year. Humor and drama light up history as the Weird Watsons, an African-American family from Flint, Michigan, seek to rehabilitate Byron, who is thirteen and an "official juvenile delinquent," by taking him "down South." The book is seen through the eyes of his ten-year-old brother, Kenny, who admires and is terrified by his brother's daring exploits and chooses a comic voice to tell about these adventures. The characters are so real that they propel you through the story. They compel you to laugh when Bryon kisses a mirror in Michigan's freezing temperatures and gets his lips stuck to the glass, to feel an overpowering horror as Kenny is nearly drowned in a whirlpool and to fear when youngest sister Joetta just escapes the Birmingham bombings. The ups and downs of the story's mood lend a feeling of real life to these real characters who make the Civil Rights Era seem very real. Never have I read a book in which comedy and drama meld so seamlessly. 1995, Delacorte, $14.95 and $4.99. Ages 10 up.

CCBC (Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices, 1995)
In an impressive literary debut, Christopher Paul Curtis recounts events in the life a 10-year-old Kenny Watson, the middle child in a middle-class African-American family living in Flint, Michigan, in 1963. A smart, sensitive boy, Kenny refers to his family as the "Weird Watsons," because each member stands out as an individual when Kenny just wants to blend in with the crowd. Much of their family life revolves around 13-year-old Byron who is a self-confident, sarcastic, rebellious adolescent. When Dad and Momma decide that Byron needs to spend some time down home with relatives in Birmingham, the whole family goes along to deliver Byron into Grandma's hands. During their brief stay in Birmingham, tragedy strikes when a bomb explodes at Grandma Sands' church one Suday morning, killing four little girls, an experience that deeply affects Kenny. On a symbolic level this funny, provocative novel mirrors events in the life of our nation in 1963, a year when the United States, like Kenny, lost its innocence as hope turned to cynicism. Honor Book, 1995 CCBC Coretta Scott King Award Discussion: Writing CCBC categories: FICTION FOR CHILDREN. 1995 (orig. 1963), Delacorte, 210 pages, $14.95. Ages 10-14.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, 1995)
Curtis debuts with a ten-year-old's lively account of his teenaged brother's ups and downs. Ken tries to make brother Byron out to be a real juvenile delinquent, but he comes across as more of a comic figure: getting stuck to the car when he kisses his image in a frozen side mirror, terrorized by his mother when she catches him playing with matches in the bathroom, earning a shaved head by coming home with a conk. In between, he defends Ken from a bully and buries a bird he kills by accident. Nonetheless, his parents decide that only a long stay with tough Grandma Sands will turn him around, so they all motor from Michigan to Alabama, arriving in time to witness the infamous September bombing of a Sunday school. Ken is funny and intelligent, but he gives readers a clearer sense of Byron's character than his own and seems strangely unaffected by his isolation and harassment (for his odd look--he has a lazy eye--and high reading level) at school. Curtis tries to shoehorn in more characters and subplots than the story will comfortably bear--as do many first novelists--but he creates a well-knit family and a narrator with a distinct, believable voice. 1995, Delacorte, $14.95. © 1995 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Jeanne Marcum Gerlach (The ALAN Review, Spring 1996 (Vol. 23, No. 3))
Curtis introduces the reader to ten-year-old Kenny and his family, the Watsons -- Momma, Dad, Joetta, Kenny, and Byron -- in his first, but unforgettable, novel. We meet the Watsons one super-cold Saturday in their home in Flint, Michigan. We immediately sense the family closeness through the comedic dialogue of the characters. However, we soon travel with the family from their somewhat calm life in the North to Birmingham, Alabama, where the Civil Rights movement was just beginning. Curtis introduces us to the South of the 1960s--a place where African Americans couldn't eat in restaurants, use public restrooms, or be seen on the streets after dark. The trip with Kenny and his family is realistic: I felt I was in the car with them. I saw the water fountains with the NO BLACKS signs. I saw the busses where African Americans stood near the rear. And I heard my African-American friends admit that they were afraid to travel in certain areas of our country. Traveling with the Watsons to Birmingham was like looking at a picture from the past. I trust that picture will keep changing for the better. I feel re-awakened. Thank you, Christopher Paul Curtis. 1996, Delacorte, 210 pp., $14.95. Ages 12 up.

Betsy Hearne (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, January 1996 (Vol. 49, No. 5))
Despite its politically charged title and photodocumentary cover, this unexpectedly subtle fiction derives its power not from polemics but from patient development. A series of funny episodes delineates the Watson clan, an individualistic lot including smart ten-year-old Kenny (who recounts the tale with personality plus), his defiant older brother Byron, quirky little sister Joetta, affectionate Dad, and determined Momma. The center of attention-and trouble-is often Byron, whom Dad and Momma finally decide to take from their Flint, Michigan home, where too many temptations abound, to feisty Grandma's house in Birmingham, Alabama, in the hopes that his adolescence will pass into some sort of maturity. The scene-setting mischief ("Byron had gotten a conk! A process! A do! A butter!" . . . which his father promptly shaves off) and the drive south reach comic-epic proportions. After coasting from offhand humor ("Here that little egghead punk is") to deliberate-and kid-authentic-jokes ("A peon? Didn't you see The Magnificent Seven? Peons was them folks what was so poor that the rich folks would just as soon pee on them as anything else"), readers get used to the story's picaresque movement, only to find the ground suddenly shifting under them with an ominous rumble. It is the Birmingham church bomb that killed four children, one of whom Kenny believes for a while to be his sister. The poignancy of the ending lies in the protagonist's bright spirits darkening after this trauma, without the author's relinquishing control of a consistently fresh narrative voice. The contrast is startling, innovative, and effective in a strong first novel showing how-and why-the Civil Rights movement affected individual African Americans. R*--Highly recommended as a book of special distinction. (c) Copyright 1996, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1995, Delacorte, 210p, $14.95. Grades 5-8.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, 1995)
A novel that begins as a lighthearted romp follows ten-year-old Kenny and the rest of the 'Weird Watsons' of Flint, Michigan, as they travel South in 1963 and become witnesses of a tragic event of the civil-rights movement. Curtis has created a wholly original novel in this warmly memorable evocation of an African-American family and their experiences that are both terrible and transcendent. Category: Fiction. 1995, Delacorte, 211pp.. Ages 9 to 12. Rating: 1: Outstanding, noteworthy in style, content, and/or illustration.