Melody Murray's Books

I picked this up with anticipation, hope and at least a little trepidation. Decker has made some incredible, unclassifiable picture books and this lightly illustrated novel represents no little departure from the formula I have loved so much.I needn't have worried. In the young protagonist Martin, Decker delivers a real, complex and prickly hero. A kid I want to bring home so he can ignore me while I make him a sandwich and tell him to pick up his room. And then he can ignore me and play his guitar with the amp turned all the way up. Oh, wait, I have one kind of like that already. Never mind. Martin's 17, and he's flailing around a little. He knows some things for sure- maybe more than the average 17-year-old does, but he's lost in more ways than he's found. He stumbles across some pretty wonderful people in the month this book covers, and I think at the end we have seen him grow and change in ways that matter. In ways that may even help him change the world.I adored Holly, and thought that the awkward miscommunications and dancing back and forth was true-to-life. It made me cringe to read, it was so authentic. The illustrations, of course, are brilliant. It's what Decker does best. There's a spareness combined with richness that's hard to articulate, but one can almost step into those pen and inks.Highly recommended.