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A review by halschrieve
All Three Stooges by Erica S. Perl
4.0
A great kids' book about grief, resilience, and Jewish identity. Also a great book about being a twelve year old boy!
Noah Cohen and Dash are best friends, and they love comedy-- both are zany, kind of ridiculous, and have a long history together of making in-jokes that nobody else gets. Noah wants to be a comedian someday, and even when his magic 8 ball says "answer hazy” about his prospects, he persists in telling jokes to his classmates every day on the bus to Hebrew school. Dash's dad Gil also loves comedy-- and Noah thinks Gil is really cool, with his record collections, easy manner, and knowledge of films. When Noah gets paired with his arch-nemesis, nerdy Noa Cohen, for his Bar Mitzvah project, he wrangles it so Dash can be part of their group too, and convinces Noa to do a project on The Three Stooges with them. She accepts, because the Stooges are "historical". It looks like it might be an okay year.
But then Dash's dad, Gil, unexpectedly dies.
In the wake of Gil's death, Noah doesn't have that much information. Dash isn't texting him back any more. And everyone--EVERYONE--is acting weird. He gets more and more panicked about losing touch with his best friend, and so, one day, when he finds Dash's phone at Hebrew school, he steals it and takes it into the bathroom, trying to understand what happened to Gil and why Dash won't talk to him. A text conversation with someone whose initials Noah doesn't recognize seems to imply Dash is mad at him, and Noah is desperate to understand why, so he can fix it. But then he drops Dash's phone in the toilet, and he feels so guilty about it that he takes it home, puts it in rice, and....forgets to return it.
I love the way grief is dealt with in this book-- Noah's lesbian moms are competent and caring, but totally unprepared to deal with Gil's suicide (he's their friend, too), and do not know how to talk to Noah about it, which makes Noah understandably angry, erratic, and upset. His idiotic kid choices are logical to him, endearing, but not over the top cute, as some MG characters can be in other books; he is a fully developed person, capable of behaving responsibly but incapable of assessing consequences, digging himself into a hole. I think that this depiction is likely to ring true for a lot of kids-- and allows kids insight into parental mistakes. Noah's rabbi Fred also is competent and caring, but he doesn't have all the answers. His approach is deeply informed by Jewish theology, which treats many questions as unresolved; his attempts to give Noah the tools to cope with death are brilliant and also, not enough. Meanwhile, every beat of Noah's interactions with his classmates--awkward, high-key, panicked, neurotic, empathetic-- feel real, and just the right blend of different developmental states. Noah is a kid, but he's also intelligent and growing fast, and his efforts to take on more than he is actually able to carry are shown sympathetically while also showing the consequences of his mistakes.
The Hebrew school environment and discussion of Judaism is present throughout the text, and also is written brilliantly and authentically-- as is the depiction of Jewish dark humor (Noah remembers going fishing with Enid, his sister, as a child, and asking her if a dead fish they saw being gutted was going to be okay; Enid replies "I think that's pretty much the definition of not going to be okay.") I think this is maybe one of the most proudly Jewish MG novels I've ever read-- which will feel very realistic to kids in a Hebrew School environment. This includes some not-so-great aspects of American Jewish culture and politics-- a rabbi makes a snide joke at one point when a kid suggests that there could be an Israeli-Palestinean skateboarding team, and the culture of film that Noah is steeped in includes a reverence for Woody Allen that will make many adults wince. But all this feels like observant documentation rather than endorsement, and the discussions that this book opens up will allow kids to talk about those elements, too.
Gil's struggle with depression takes a backseat here; mental illness might end up feeling frightening to kids reading. But people lose relatives to suicide frequently, and this text does a great job of making those readers not feel alone.
Most characters are white Jewish, with a few mixed-ethnicity characters referenced.
Noah Cohen and Dash are best friends, and they love comedy-- both are zany, kind of ridiculous, and have a long history together of making in-jokes that nobody else gets. Noah wants to be a comedian someday, and even when his magic 8 ball says "answer hazy” about his prospects, he persists in telling jokes to his classmates every day on the bus to Hebrew school. Dash's dad Gil also loves comedy-- and Noah thinks Gil is really cool, with his record collections, easy manner, and knowledge of films. When Noah gets paired with his arch-nemesis, nerdy Noa Cohen, for his Bar Mitzvah project, he wrangles it so Dash can be part of their group too, and convinces Noa to do a project on The Three Stooges with them. She accepts, because the Stooges are "historical". It looks like it might be an okay year.
But then Dash's dad, Gil, unexpectedly dies.
In the wake of Gil's death, Noah doesn't have that much information. Dash isn't texting him back any more. And everyone--EVERYONE--is acting weird. He gets more and more panicked about losing touch with his best friend, and so, one day, when he finds Dash's phone at Hebrew school, he steals it and takes it into the bathroom, trying to understand what happened to Gil and why Dash won't talk to him. A text conversation with someone whose initials Noah doesn't recognize seems to imply Dash is mad at him, and Noah is desperate to understand why, so he can fix it. But then he drops Dash's phone in the toilet, and he feels so guilty about it that he takes it home, puts it in rice, and....forgets to return it.
I love the way grief is dealt with in this book-- Noah's lesbian moms are competent and caring, but totally unprepared to deal with Gil's suicide (he's their friend, too), and do not know how to talk to Noah about it, which makes Noah understandably angry, erratic, and upset. His idiotic kid choices are logical to him, endearing, but not over the top cute, as some MG characters can be in other books; he is a fully developed person, capable of behaving responsibly but incapable of assessing consequences, digging himself into a hole. I think that this depiction is likely to ring true for a lot of kids-- and allows kids insight into parental mistakes. Noah's rabbi Fred also is competent and caring, but he doesn't have all the answers. His approach is deeply informed by Jewish theology, which treats many questions as unresolved; his attempts to give Noah the tools to cope with death are brilliant and also, not enough. Meanwhile, every beat of Noah's interactions with his classmates--awkward, high-key, panicked, neurotic, empathetic-- feel real, and just the right blend of different developmental states. Noah is a kid, but he's also intelligent and growing fast, and his efforts to take on more than he is actually able to carry are shown sympathetically while also showing the consequences of his mistakes.
The Hebrew school environment and discussion of Judaism is present throughout the text, and also is written brilliantly and authentically-- as is the depiction of Jewish dark humor (Noah remembers going fishing with Enid, his sister, as a child, and asking her if a dead fish they saw being gutted was going to be okay; Enid replies "I think that's pretty much the definition of not going to be okay.") I think this is maybe one of the most proudly Jewish MG novels I've ever read-- which will feel very realistic to kids in a Hebrew School environment. This includes some not-so-great aspects of American Jewish culture and politics-- a rabbi makes a snide joke at one point when a kid suggests that there could be an Israeli-Palestinean skateboarding team, and the culture of film that Noah is steeped in includes a reverence for Woody Allen that will make many adults wince. But all this feels like observant documentation rather than endorsement, and the discussions that this book opens up will allow kids to talk about those elements, too.
Gil's struggle with depression takes a backseat here; mental illness might end up feeling frightening to kids reading. But people lose relatives to suicide frequently, and this text does a great job of making those readers not feel alone.
Most characters are white Jewish, with a few mixed-ethnicity characters referenced.