Drawing a Blank: Or How I Tried to Solve a Mystery, End a Feud, and Land the Girl of My Dreams (16)

I picked up Drawing a Blank by Daniel Ehrenhaft for next to nothing on the clearance shelf at BAM! one day last summer, and it's been sitting on my shelf ever since.  For some reason, when I was looking for my next read, I picked it up, and I'm glad I did.

The book centers around Carlton Dunne IV, a loner who is more at home in his published comic strip than in his own life.  His mother has died, his step-mother has left, and his father has shipped him off to a boarding school, where he suffers the tortures of adolescence.  Soon, however, he is drawn into a world shadowed in his comics where he learns things about his father, his family, and himself along the way.

With it's 17-year-old protagonist, you would think that the target audience would be high school students, but I found that it would probably fit better into a middle school classroom.  I could see myself teaching this to 7th or 8th grade students (or possibly 9th), but nothing much higher than that.  The chapters are short, which makes for a really quick read, and the comic panels sprinkled throughout add an element of creativity and depth.

Overall, I'm really glad I picked up this book.  I may even try to work it into a lesson some day.

4/5 Stars

--D