Pool Boy

Author: Michael Simmons
Year Published: 2003
Publisher: Dell
ISBN#: 0385731965
Pages: 164
Media Type: Book
Classification: Fiction
Subject: Father-son relationship, Family relationship
Genre: Drama
Reader's Annotation:

When his father is arrested for insider trading and his family loses all their money, Brett Gerson takes a job as an assistant to a 70-something pool cleaner in his former wealthy California neighborhood and learns some valuable life lessons.

Plot Summary:

Brett's stockbroker dad is in jail for insider training, and the family is suddenly broke and disgraced. Unlike most stories about parents in prison, this first novel focuses on a spoiled brat, sorry that he won't be getting a car for his upcoming sixteenth birthday; bitter because, instead of sunning himself by the family pool, he has to spend the summer cleaning the pools of his former neighbors. He knows he is a brat and he glories in it. He is ugly to his dad when he is forced to visit him in prison, and he hurts his too-perfect mom. Of course, he learns his lesson, suffers real loss, and comes to know about backbreaking work and about forgiveness. What's best here is the teen's authentic, contemporary first-person voice, obnoxious in its self-absorption, funny in its self-mockery, and also vulnerable when real sadness blows the boy's cover.

Reading Level: 4
Interest Level: 7-12