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DEAR MR. KAPPS
Author:
Robert
Ferrier
Fourteen-year-old
Rafe Mackey, an aspiring comedy
writer, keeps himself more or less
sane and functional while undergoing
chemotherapy for lymphoma. His method
is to write letters to a nationally
known TV comic named Solomon Kapps.
"When I write funny stuff, time
goes warpy," says Rafe, "I
loop into another world." And
another world is a good place to be
when you are facing your own fear and
pain.
Among
the other situations Rafe is dealing
with are his own performance anxiety,
(Do his schtick before an audience? No
way.), the failing health and ultimate
death of his chemo buddy BB, and the
ludicrous "John Alden"
situation he falls into when the most
beautiful girl in his class asks him
to help her football-hunk boyfriend
appreciate books and incidentally pass
English.
This is
much, much more than a problem novel
about lymphoma, It's well-written,
inventive, many-layered, and genuinely
funny. (She's so messy you don't visit
her room, you go there with a
guide.") Even though Mr. Kapps
himself never answers the letters,
Rafe finds his own answers through
writing them. The book has a few minor
flaws (such as the fact that Lea, an
older teenager who has survived
lymphoma, sometimes talks like a
National Cancer Society pamphlet on
positive thinking), but they are minor
when set beside the story's genuine
virtues. I laughed, I cried, I didn't
want the book to end. Buy it.
~ Georgess McHargues, McQuark
Reviews
Selected the top eBook in Young Adult
category in 2001
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Dear
Mr. Kapps is
excellent on four levels, Emotions,
Relations, Imagination and Experience.
Ferrier get an A+ on all four levels.
He has experienced the pain of which
he writes. The Imagination behind the
story is a stroke of genius which will
have the reader recalling Relations he
has had or which he wished he had.
Your Emotions will lift you to
excitement and then have you reaching
for a Kleenex in a few minutes. Great
story line, skilled writing which will
leave a tug in your heart.
~ Jim E. Cummins
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