I’ll never have normal vision again.” But in the next moment, Harrell grants him levity: “Seventh grade! Now in WonkyVision!” Late in the book, as the sight in Ross’s right eye begins to fade, Harrell marks his character’s grief: “My stomach drops, and I stop in my tracks. Harrell never downplays or sugarcoats the gravity of his hero’s situation, but he wisely steers clear of melodrama, allowing Ross to have his good days and bad without slowing the story. Another boy threatens his life after Ross accuses him of circulating a cruel meme among their classmates. Another friend, Isaac, breaks their “Great Oreo Friend Pact” shortly after learning of Ross’s diagnosis. Ross’s best friend, Abby, finds out she and her family are moving from Indiana to Minnesota. All these behaviors are on display in “Wink,” not only in Ross but also in the other teenagers who populate the well-rounded cast and are dealing with their own adolescent difficulties, large and small. Sometimes they make jokes, or smash things, or withdraw. Seventh-grade boys (and the men they grow into) don’t always have the emotional vocabulary to deal with their anxieties. The novel ’s irreverence is its strong suit. A clump of radiated hair falling onto the crush’s pizza slice is just as bad as anything else Ross is undergoing - or maybe worse: “Some of my eye goop is mixed in with the hair, holding it together and making it look waaay grosser.” An accompanying sketch of a hamster on a slice of pizza illustrates the grossness. Sickness and health may be important, but so is impressing the pretty and popular skateboarder girl. fiction, but in “Wink ” matters of seventh-grade social standing are treated with the same life-or-death seriousness as matters of, well, life and death. Illness has long been a popular theme in Y.A. He has a rare type, “a mucoepidermoid carcinoma of the lacrimal gland,” which threatens his eyesight and his life.

As Ross Maloy, the protagonist of Rob Harrell’s terrific new book, WINK (Dial, 320 pp., $16.99 ages 9 to 12), says: “Can I tell you how sick I am of being different? I hate it! You have no idea what I’d give to be normal.”īy most measures, Ross is already a normal seventh grader doing normal seventh-grade stuff: learning guitar, playing video games, dealing with a bully and drawing his homemade comic strip, “Batpig.” What sets Ross apart from his classmates is his cancer diagnosis. After all, when you feel like a freak, the desire to blend in with the crowd must be overwhelming.

It makes sense, then, that teenagers want so badly to fit in.

No wonder so many of us look back on those years with about as much fondness as we have for cafeteria food. Bodies stretch and bend like Silly Putty. As the father of two teenagers who have recently emerged from puberty, I can tell you that children are freaks in middle school. Everybody feels like a freak in middle school.

Wink by rob harrell summary