Heck Superhero

By Martine Leavitt format: children's paperback publication: July 2005 ISBN: 9780889953338

Price $9.95 Quantity This item is in stock and usually ships within 24 hours.

Winner of the 2005 Children's Book Award.

Thirteen-year-old Heck is a pretty normal kid with some artistic talent and a distinctive, hyperactive imagination. Life with his mother has been hand-to-mouth but not catastrophic. He has a modest, passive support system: his best friend and some kindly, casual, acquaintances. When he and his mother are evicted, she carelessly assumes he’s staying with his friend and leaves him alone for a few days. Heck, confident in his own ability to get by and wanting to protect his mother from criticism, decides not to ask for help. For the next few days he brushes up against a harsher reality than he anticipated. He’s hungry, broke, homeless, and plagued by a constant toothache. He has a series of encounters involving varying degrees of callousness, harshness, and risk. Heck sustains himself (and the reader) with his wit, his imagination, and his optimism. We really like Heck. The dramatic tension comes from the discrepancy between Heck’s perception of reality and ours. His best friend, Spence, is the spokesman of our perceptions and concerns. Eventually Heck encounters Marion, homeless, harmless, and clearly deranged, who triggers the climactic events. Heck is aware that Marion is definitely on the other side of sane but he can’t help himself from getting involved. Marion inhabits the fantastic world Heck imagines. Again, we see Heck’s hubris, his naive sense of his own capabilities, a misguided assurance that he’s okay and knows what’s real and what isn’t. The reader sees clearly that Marion is, in fact, crazy and lost. Heck unwisely participates in Marion’s lunatic fantasy, even to the extent of assuring Marion that he will protect him. The trauma of Marion’s death makes Heck realize that his fantasy powers are spurious, and that he’s just a kid. He can’t take care of himself, let alone anyone else. He’s taken a walk on the wild side, done drugs, committed theft, gone hungry, been in pain, and, finally, seen just how bad being in the streets can get. In the end, he chooses to ask for help and to set things straight with his mother.

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