Paperboy by Vince Vawter

This was the February pick for my neighborhood book club. It's another one off the Beehive Award Nominees table, and it was also a Newbery Honor book for 2014. Using his own life experience with a severe stutter, Vawter creates a simple story about a stuttering 11-year-old boy growing up in Memphis in 1959. The main character (whose name you don't learn until the end of the book) takes over his friend's paper route while he's out of town one summer. He meets some interesting neighborhood characters along the way and allows his naive innocence to put him in danger's way. 

One of my first thoughts about this book was how different our world was back then. The boy is put in some pretty sketchy situations that would make any mom nervous, from flirtatious older women to strangers inviting him in and a downright dangerous homeless man. I found myself distracted a bit by the minor characters and the problems they brought to the table that were never resolved. The author hinted at a lot of possible story lines with different characters, but most of them never came to fruition. The paperboy himself was forgettable and seemed a little too naive to me.

One member of my book club listened to the audiobook version of Paperboy and said the author's note at the end was very interesting to listen to. Vawter still has a bit of a speech impediment, which was audible in the small section he read aloud at the end. 

I do think this could make an good pick for a 4th-6th grade boy. Sometimes it's hard to find good "boy" reads in that age range. It has a wide variety of characters and introduces a different era of the not-too-distant past that they may not be familiar with. That being said, I didn't think it was great, and I certainly didn't think it deserved a Newbery Honor. When I was in elementary school, the Newbery Award was reserved for the best of the best. It seems these days, many of the Newbery books are just so-so, including this selection.

Overall Rating: 3 stars

Content Warnings: There are a couple scenes of adult drunkenness and hints of domestic violence.

Target Audience: Upper elementary to middle school boys