this is an adorable book i listend to it on tape i would recomend listening to it becase the you can here all the raidio stuff all and all a highly enjoyable book. ( )

I love this book so much. One of my favorite things about it is the way Avi wrote it. Everything in it is dialouge. It's a bit confusing sometimes, but if you back up and read it through again, it makes perfect sense.
The story is about a sixth grade radio entusiast, Frankie, during WWII. He lives next door to his best friend Mario, whose father was killed in the war. ( )

I would recommend this book to kids from 11 onwards. Its unusual format makes it very easy to read and understand (there is no narration, only dialogues and conversations), and the young, adventure-loving hero keeps us fond of him and wanting to shake him by the shoulders at the same time. ( )

A young boy in WWII era small town America is obsessed with radio programs and radio heroes such as the Lone Ranger, Sky King, and Captain Midnight. Much to the detriment of his school work and family relations, he goes about calling himself Chet Barker and his friend Mario is his trusty sidekick. He narrates adventures for them to have, suspecting his family's boarder is an evil scientist and scheming to make him leave their house. His other plan involves getting his teacher to marry his brother who was wounded in the war.
Although a reader closer to our protagonist in both age and gender may have different feelings, I find Frankie an annoying, self-centered brat whose antics could very well have hurt himself and others. He did not deserve to have things turn out as well as they did for him.
I would have ranked this book only one star, except for the fact that it is written entirely in dialogue, as though it was a radio show itself, which I found an interesting writing style and a quite redeeming quality. It must have been incredibly difficult to convey the story without relying on descriptive paragraphs, phrases such as 'Tom said exasperatedly' or even the sound effects and recognizably different voices that make an audio drama work. ( )