Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key
Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key by Jack Gantos, is a fun, yet insightful book about a young boy named Joey Pigza who lives with attention deficit disorder, or ADD. The story is narrated by Joey himself, and it shows readers some of the different challenges and obstacles that children with ADD face in their daily lives. He struggles to sit still in class and pay attention, and one day, he swallows his key. This gets him sent down to the nurse. Throughout the book, Joey finds himself getting in trouble multiple times, by not following directions and hurting himself, as well as hurting others around him. He ends up spending time in a separate school for children with disabilities and meets a new friend, who he calls Special Ed. I think that this book is a well-written book for many reasons.
I think that the language and creative style of this book gives the reader the ability to relate to Joey and visually picture the different events within the book. For example, Gantos explains Joey’s thoughts by writing, “when I looked at the letters, they kept sliding off the page like drops of mercury when you smash open a thermometer,” (Gantos, p. 47). This use of creative word choice makes the reader fully relate to the frustrations and challenges that Joey faces when he tries to focus on a task. Also, the characters in this book were very believable, relatable, and memorable. The descriptions of Joey’s struggles made the reader truly relate to him and understand what it would be like to live with ADD. Lastly, I thought the plot of this book had a good flow, and provided the reader with an exciting and suspenseful experience. Throughout the book, the author included unexpected events, such as Joey chopping off his classmate’s nose, which kept the reader engaged, interested, and always wanting to know what happens next. Overall, I thought that this book was a very well-written book. It presents creative word choice, and sentence structure, and includes characters that are relatable and memorable to many readers. I think that it would be a good book to read in 4th or 5th grade because it is a good length, but would challenge them to see things from a new perspective. |