REGULAR GUY

PLB 0-06-028368-8 A boy finds himself so ill-suited for his family that he believes he must have been switched at birth—a classic childhood hunch that in Weeks’s first novel, by turns drab and exaggerated, falls pretty flat. Sixth grader Guy thinks of himself as normal and feels alienated from his eccentric parents: his red-headed mother decoupages everything in sight and renders his father in ice sculpture; Guy’s father, in turn, can do disgusting things with an oyster and is called “Wuckums.” Along with his best friend, Buzz, Guy discovers among the school files that there was indeed another boy in town born the same day as he was: Bob-o. The weird and odious Bob-o has parents that seem remarkably normal to Guy, and they are left-handed and dimpled, as is he. Guy invents a class assignment that involves switching homes with Bob-o for a weekend; Guy discovers that normal isn’t much fun and Bob-o finds kindred spirits in Guy’s folks. The whole thing blows up in a melodramatic misinterpretation, as Guy figures out that there is no place like home—a foreordained ending in a novel that starts with a thin premise and grows flimsier with each page. (Fiction. 9-12)