Most days he is Robbie Jones of Santa Rosita, California. "Quiet, something of a loner", say his classmates at Kennedy Middle School. "He liked to draw..". volunteers his friend Ruben. "Me and him made up stories all the time about a superhero called Megaboy". But one day, Robbie takes a .38 from his father's sock drawer, climbs onto the new bike he's been given for his thirteenth birthday, pedals a few blocks to Main Street, and shoots the elderly Korean shopkeeper. Within hours, Jae Lin Koh is dead. This extraordinary book, an album of inquiry as terse and visually arresting as any TV news brief, sets out the particulars of Robbie's actions and arrest, meek and shivering, later that day. The boy confesses but does not explain. Other people try, his parents, teachers, the cops, psychologists, the girl Robbie "liked". The voices of America, beyond Megaboy's help. Together they will have young adults listening -- Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

The story of a 13-year-old boy who shoots a Korean liquor store owner is filtered through 18 brief first-person perspectives. "This book asks readers to piece together their own interpretation of the events, and it will hold them breathless long past the last page," said PW in a starred review. Ages 11-up. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Robbie Jones, 13 years old and a loner, takes his father's handgun, and kills an elderly store owner. This slim volume records the varied responses of family, community members, and classmates. Robbie, obsessed with his Megaboy drawings, could be the boy next door. Except for an implied psychosis, no clear motive for his violence is evident, leaving the reader appropriately unsettled. The unusual book design contributes to the emotional content of a book that is sure to spark debate. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Gr. 6^-9. Taking a gun from his father's bureau, a boy gets on his bike, rides to a local liquor store, and shoots the elderly proprietor dead. It's a violent scenario right out of recent headlines, and we have no trouble imagining the tragic events--even though they are actually over when this book begins. That 13-year-old Robbie Jones brutally killed Mr. Jae Lin Koh is never in dispute. The characters--the witnesses, Robbie's middle-class parents, his friend Ruben, his classmates, his lawyer, even the young murderer himself--acknowledge Robbie's guilt. It's the why that is so disconcerting and puzzling--and Robbie "isn't talking." Through a perfectly modulated blend of computer-generated graphics and separate, rivetingly concise first-person perspectives, readers get a glimpse of Robbie (his home life, his crush on self-involved Tara, his cartoon hero Megaboy) and the people affected by his action (among them, the devastated Mrs. Koh, Robbie's obdurate father, a classmate who can't help but "look differently at everybody now"). The horror is Robbie's retreat into a comic-book world that he's created with his own hand--and the absence of any indication that he'll ever come out. Although this is not a graphic novel in the usual sense--it's not in comic-strip format--the pictures are an integral part of the whole. Reflecting the mood rather than the action, they add a surreal quality that makes the story all the more frightening; some ripple and pulse with movement, others speak loudly with their silence: the hallway at Robbie's school, a collage of family photos that makes Robbie real. Along with Walter Dean Myers' Scorpions (1988) and Sonia Levitin's Adam's War (1994), this is part of a growing number of novels for the age group that focus on the tragic outcome of guns in the hands of children. What's different here is the intimacy--this lost child, the classic outsider, could easily be part of the family next door. The possibilities for discussion are endless: gun control, mental health, family relationships, prejudice, how what we do impacts on those around us, the failure of society to reach out to help its children. And readers will certainly argue motive: Did he do it for Tara? Did he do it for fun? Or was he crazy? --Stephanie Zvirin From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.