Monday, March 27, 2017

Review: Age Six Racer by Joe Vercillo


Genre: Action Adventure/Coming of Age

Description:

“Now, I'm not sure if it's like this for every guy out there, but it seems like the main underlying reason for everything I do is because of a girl. It was 'the girl' who made me run away from my hometown. And it was 'the girl' who almost got me killed. But it was also because of 'the girl' that I ended up in New York City with my three best friends on a mad adventure. My name is Princeton, and I'm a white-footed mouse.”

Author:

“Joe Vercillo is a professional ice-hockey goalie, singer-songwriter, and actor from Toronto, Canada. Stumbling upon the love of his life, he journeyed down to Princeton, New Jersey, and found a dead mouse in a garage. The rest is history.”

Appraisal:

I never dreamed I could like a book with a mouse as the protagonist until now. I know, Stuart Little is a children’s classic, but I honestly don’t remember ever reading it or having my mom read it to my siblings and I like she did with E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. (No, Mom let me read The Elements of Style on my own, once I was old enough.) Age Six Racer is also not a children’s book. (While it has some mild adult-ish language, it should be fine for the young adult demographic up to grey-hairs like me.)

The story is a little bit action-adventure with a coming of age element. The mice, rats, and other animals that populate Vercillo’s story world are presented as more than those pests we lay out traps to eradicate, but as intelligent beings, going about their lives much like we do. The vermin seemed almost human. Buying into the premise was easier than I would have thought and once I did I cared about Princeton and what happened to him and those he met on his grand adventure. What a fun read.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

Format/Typo Issues:

Review based on a beta, pre-release version. Unable to judge final version in this area.

Rating: ***** Five Stars

Reviewed by: BigAl

Approximate word count: 35-40,000 words

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks for the review Al!!
Joe