The Zigzag Kid (1994)

Twelve-year-old Amnon Feuerberg, only one week before his bar mitzvah, is placed on a train in Jerusalem by his dad and Gabi, his dad's secretary and (for many years) live-in female companion. Not especially happy about this trip, "Nonny" is e nroute to the home of his uncle in Haifa...or so he believes. His actual destination is far more exciting than that. Neither Nonny Feuerberg nor the reader will have any idea where he is headed, but both are in for a wild, unbelievable ride!

Grossman does a terrific job with The ZigZag Kid. He aptly combines a young boy's sense of adventure, flamboyant characters, a fine-tuned mystery, two love stories, and a family revelation. Then he turns these all into one fun and frolicsome page-turner. ( )

Although Nonny wants to be just like his policeman father, somehow everything he does goes a little bit awry. When he is kidnapped by his father's nemesis a few days before his bar mitzvah, he is taken on a journey, which leads him not only all over Israel but also into his own history and being. Part of the key to the story lies in the book's original title, There Are Zigzag Children; our narrator knows he is a kid that doesn't fit in a regular mold - he is neither square nor circle - but during his journey, he learns that he is not an extreme anomaly like he thought, and that there are other zigzag kids in the world and that some of them are much closer to him than he could ever have imagined. Although it's difficult to change one's view of the world, Nonny grows strong enough to accept the unacceptable and, ultimately, it's his balancing the different molds and shapes that presents the happiest version - a square with a flash of lighting inside prevails in the end. ( )