Four Eyes

 

Shirley J.                    Juvenile Graphic Novel                                  Based on the author's experience    

Four Eyes by Rex Ogle     224 pages

A really good story about friendship, peer pressure, wanting to fit in and doing stupid things.   Rex did a stupid thing, though everybody and their brother tells you don't look at the sun during an eclipse, he did.  Honestly, we all push the envelope here and there in life but this one proved exceedingly bad for Rex, it really did mess his eyes up.   When in school he realizes he can't see the board it is a rude awakening because he had been a A student before starting middle school.  Now this was turning out to be a nightmare.  He was the shortest one in his classes it seems every one else had a growth spurt except Rex over the summer.   Because of redistricting hardly no one he went to elementary school with was attending his new middle school so he had to go through the whole making friends again thing and the one bud he had there was sucking up to the rich kids with major attitude and who made fun of the other students.   Rex didn't like that and he didn't like them nor what they said.   Rex's parents were divorced.  His Dad had money but his Mom worked two jobs and still, even with her new husband working and Rex's younger step-brother, they barely scraped by.   When the principal and Rex's teacher let his mother know he needed glasses, Rex tried to deny it, but, when Rex couldn't see the t.v. one night and asked that the screen be adjusted, Rex's Mom knew he really did need glasses.   She was caught between a rock and a hard place.   Rex's glasses ended up way more than she could afford and that was getting the cheapest frames they had, sadly, Rex's prescription was so strong his lenses looked like Coke bottles.   He was doomed.   The story has so many real situations in it that kids do have to suffer and endure in gradeschool and it is a tough life making it through those years.  Even tougher when your clothes are hand me downs, patched, worn to threadbare, you get the free lunch at school because your parents are too poor to give you money for lunch, you live in meager circumstances in rough areas because those are the only digs your folks can afford.   Life is tough enough without all the extra burdens, now, coke bottle glasses to boot.   And of course they call him four eyes.   A good coming of age story with loads of reality thrown in.  I enjoyed it and sympathized.   I recommend this book to listeners on up.  Get ready kids cause there are many situations here you will have to face and choose your reaction to.    Well done Rex Ogle.