Guitar Boy [With Earbuds] (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
Have you ever known what it’s like to be on your own as a child? Do you know what it’s like to be extremely mad at a parent? Travis knows what it’s like. His mother has just gotten into a car accident and is now in the hospital. Now he is left with his father and four siblings. Their father is having a tough time supporting his family. He’s even taken his daughter out of school so she would take care of her siblings. Now his father wants Travis to quit school and make money to support his family. Travis doesn’t like this because his father doesn’t have a job and now he’s making Travis work instead of him. After Travis quits his job, his father kicks him out of the house. “I said, get out!” (pg. 61) He’s now trying to live on his own. How can he go home now that his father is mad at him? In “Guitar Boy” by MJ Auch, Travis is broke and only has one thing, his guitar. He tries to make a living with his singing and his music playing, but this is hard when you are homeless. I give this book a four star rating for the amazingness of this book. I recommend this to any middle schooler who loves realistic fiction. When I added "Guitar Boy" to my TBR pile, I remember thinking that it sounded more like a middle grade novel than a YA. That idea might have stemmed from the summary, or the knowledge that the last novel I read by M.J. Auch was one I read at fourteen and pulled from the MG section in the library. Whatever the intended audience, I finished "Guitar Boy" in a day and loved every minute of it.Travis is a fourteen year old guitar player whose life has been turned upside down in the wake of his mother's car accident and subsequent injuries. His father is trying and failing to run the household and keep his five children fed, and a string of bad decisions leads to him throwing Travis out of the house. Travis ends up unofficially apprenticed to a local guitar-maker while he attempts to piece his life and his family back together.For an incredibly simple premise, this story had so much heart and so much personality. It wasn't as much about music as it was about connection--to the family you're born with and the family you choose. The people Travis meets when he's isolated from everything he knows become as much a family to him as the one he's left behind, and I loved watching those bonds strengthen as the story progresses. All of the characters in "Guitar Boy" felt authentic, like if you pulled off the interstate at some nowhere town in the Adirondacks you might encounter any of them.Every one of the subplots tied neatly together, from the local festival Travis helps the guitar-maker prepare for, to Travis's own missing family heirloom guitar, to his attempts to reach his mother. The links in the overall chain of events were believable and heart-wrenching and ultimately hopeful. "Guitar Boy" is the kind of book that I want to avoid talking about too specifically, because no amount of summarizing will even begin to do the story justice. If you like quieter stories with great character development and a happier ending than you might have dared to hope for, definitely give this one a read.
What do You think about Guitar Boy [With Earbuds] (2011)?
I thought this book was interesting. I picked it up because it had to do with music.
—ijanee
Won't rate it because I didn't finish it...Was flat, didn't hold my attention.
—cgoins34
