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(More customer reviews)When I was a kid I rode my bike all the time. I rode it all around my block and up and down my street. I rode it with my dad and brother to the local high school where we'd play a makeshift game of bike tag. This was all in the 1980s and I have delightful memories of the time. Sure, there was the occasional scare. Once I rode into a street without looking and a car had to stop quite short to avoid hitting me. My dad wasn't too thrilled about that, but nothing bad happened and it wasn't as if I was punished. And not once, NOT ONCE, did I ever wear a bike helmet. At the time, I probably had some vague sense that I was invincible. Today, I look at that near miss with the car and silently shudder. Today kids know about bike helmets and most of them wear them. But there's nothing like a book like, "Mick Harte Was Here" to kinda drill the point home. I'm not saying that this book is just a good public safety message. I'm saying it tells a compelling story that will probably encourage your kids to take a little more care of their lives than if they hadn't read it in the first place.
"So this isn't the kind of book where you meet the main character and you get to like him real well and then he dies at the end", says narrator Phoebe Harte. Mick Harte is dead, to begin with. In a straightforward voice, thirteen-year-old Pheobe tells of how her brother's death was an accident in the purest sense of the word. He was on his bike, he hit a rock, and he smashed into a passing truck. Instantaneous head wound. Instantaneous death. But before you get to that you get to see a little of Mick on that last day. You see how he messed around with his sister and how they had a mild fight that morning. You get a sense of his sense of humor and wacky style. Without really meaning to, you discover that you really like Mick. And now he's dead. With the barest minimum of text, author Barbara Park shows exactly how one family chooses to deal with Mick's death. Pheobe adjusts better than her parents, but she still has a great deal of difficulty figuring out exactly where Mick is. Fortunately, by the end of the book she's reached a kind of peace. A slow understanding that sometimes this is the way things are. And as a reader, you feel good about that. Sad, but good.
Barbara Park's real strength here is the age group she's written this tale for. This is a kind of young reader chapter book, just perfect for fourth and fifth graders. Park's Phoebe has a definite dark sense of humor. For example, after she remarks that the only upside to someone's death is that you have no appetite she points out that she lost some weight just in time for the funeral. Says Phoebe in a bleak comedic voice, "Nature's real thoughtful that way". "Mick Harte Was Here", is ultimately hopeful, though. For people who have always associated Miss Park with her pre-eminently popular "Junie B. Jones" series, they may find themselves a little shocked to realize that Park can be a deeply profound author when she chooses. Death isn't glossed over here. There's a satisfying moment where Phoebe takes on a teacher who keeps talking about the girl's "loss" and how she's "lost" a sibling. As Phoebe is quick to point out, no one here is lost. Mick's dead. But by the end of the book, she's come to accept that. And to find a good way to grieve.
It's difficult locating well-written books on death for kids in this reading age group. Most of the stuff you're going to find is going to concentrate on dead pets or dying horses and the like. Few writers have the authorial guts to take on the death of a child. Louisa May Alcott did, but she's one of the few. Now Barbara Park has come to join her. This is no "Little Women", but it's a good read and a true account of how a family must stay together in the time of a crisis. It's not going to answer any questions for kids about death. It'll just tell them how some people deal with it. And that's enough.
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