- Popular Magazines
- Just Added
- Cooking & Food
- Fashion
- Health & Fitness
- Home & Garden
- News & Politics
- See all
Grave-robbing. What kind of monster would do such a thing? It's true that Leonardo da Vinci did it, Shakespeare wrote about it, and the resurrection men of nineteenth-century Scotland practically made it an art. But none of this matters to Joey Crouch, a sixteen-year-old straight-A student living in Chicago with his single mom. For the most part, Joey's life is about playing the trumpet and avoiding the daily humiliations of high school.
Everything changes when Joey's mother dies in a tragic accident and he is sent to rural Iowa to live with the father he has never known, a strange, solitary man with unimaginable secrets. At first, Joey's father wants nothing to do with him, but once father and son come to terms with each other, Joey's life takes a turn both macabre and exhilarating.
Daniel Kraus's masterful plotting and unforgettable characters make Rotters a moving, terrifying, and unconventional epic about fathers and sons, complex family ties, taboos, and the ever-present specter of mortality.
-
Creators
-
Publisher
-
Awards
-
Release date
April 5, 2011 -
Formats
-
OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780307941831
- File size: 469647 KB
- Duration: 16:18:25
-
-
Languages
- English
-
Levels
- ATOS Level: 5.7
- Interest Level: 9-12(UG)
- Text Difficulty: 7-12
-
Reviews
-
Publisher's Weekly
February 28, 2011
Kraus's (The Monster Variations) sophomore novel is a gruesome and meandering work that saps the life (so to speak) out of a potentially fascinating subject. When 16-year-old Joey's mother is killed by a bus, he's sent to live with Ken Harnett, his previously unknown father in Iowa. Harnett is distant and passively abusive, not taking care of his son's food or hygiene needs for days at a time as he travels, and Joey quickly becomes the target of school bullies (including both a jock and a teacher). When Joey discovers that Harnett's business is actually grave robbing, he persuades his father to bring him along. There's little sense of conflict over the morality or ethics of grave robbing, which is matched by Joey's lack of remorse over his revenge on the bullies or those he perceives as having harmed him—something that might be interesting in a character deliberately portrayed as a sociopath, but here feels like an omission. There's little danger or excitement in the grave robbing scenes and nothing new in the dreary, overlong scenes of an outsider at a new school. Ages 14–up. -
Publisher's Weekly
May 28, 2012
When his mother dies, 16-year-old Joey Crouch is sent to a small town in Iowa to live with the father he has never known. Initially unwelcomed by his dad, the displaced boy suffers bullying from both classmates and teachers—but before too long learns about his father’s secret: he’s a professional grave robber. Kirby Heyborne provides winning narration in this audio edition. His youthful rendition of Joey is perfect and captures the essence of Kraus’s protagonist. Additionally, the narrator creates unique voices, accents, and dialects for male and female characters of all ages. Heyborne’s performance hits all the right marks, and the result is an audiobook full of moments of sorrow, surprise, drama, adventurous excitement, and creepy darkness that will appeal to young listeners. Ages 14–up. An Ember paperback.
-
Formats
- OverDrive Listen audiobook
Languages
- English
Levels
- ATOS Level:5.7
- Interest Level:9-12(UG)
- Text Difficulty:7-12
Loading
Why is availability limited?
×Availability can change throughout the month based on the library's budget. You can still place a hold on the title, and your hold will be automatically filled as soon as the title is available again.
The Kindle Book format for this title is not supported on:
×Read-along ebook
×The OverDrive Read format of this ebook has professional narration that plays while you read in your browser. Learn more here.