Boy with the Lampshade on His Head Book

Stanley Krakow is amazing.

He's the world-record holder for Rock Kicking and Holding His Breath. He's a superhero in his spare time, rescuing his camp cabin mates from Volkswagen-size flying insects. Stanley's amazing all right...when no one can see or hear him....

The real Stanley is painfully shy; too shy to even speak out loud in class, much less kick a rock when he thinks someone might be watching. He worries about, well, everything, including how to save his prized glow-in-the-dark fish when his brother puts a river trout into the fish tank, whether stinky socks really do protect you from monster attacks (in which case he needs to start spending all sleeping hours in the laundry basket), and, most importantly, how he can get out of reading-aloud period in school. All in all, Stanley far prefers to live in his head.

That all changes when he meets Theresa, a new friend who has a terrible, real, problem, and needs Stanley to become the hero he's always pretending to be.

Meet the amazing Stanley Krakow...a most unlikely hero.

Publishers Weekly

Stanley, the protagonist of Wetter's striking if flawed debut, might be a tongue-tied geek to his fifth-grade classmates, but in his own mind he is the Very Famous Stanley Krakow, constantly trailed by surreptitious ESPN vans that record his every record-breaking move. At home he puts a lampshade on his head (the record for number of times his parents pass him without noticing is 20; the record for most minutes before being discovered is 52). The farcical elements here can grow to extreme proportions: Stanley's mother labels his camp clothes with the initials SUKS (for Stanley Uriah Krakow, and "The `S' shows possession"); Stanley's uncle has cracked up and now thinks he's Alan Ladd; and all Stanley's martinet of a teacher cares about is maintaining order for order's sake. In addition to this nutty mix, Stanley also has regular-guy adventures with boys in the neighborhood and, every now and then, thinks about the new girl, Theresa Wasnicki, whose mother forces her to mow the lawn with scissors. Wetter's decision to exaggerate some but not all of the storytelling might make it harder for readers to see that Theresa is being abused by her mother, especially because the author devotes more space to picaresque adventures than to the conflicts surrounding Theresa-even though these form the moral linchpin of the story. While this work loses focus, the author maintains a distinctive voice; his next novel is one to anticipate with pleasure. Ages 8-12. (May) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.