Review 1: Printz Award or Honors

Zusak, Markus. I Am the Messenger. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print.

Annotation: “If a guy like you can stand up and do what you did, then maybe everyone can.” Four different aces drastically spirals an underage cab driver on a journey to help strangers in tough situations but within those strangers he finds his own journey to self-discovery. 

Justification for Nomination:

       Like most YA novels, I Am The Messenger portrays a young adult dealing with life and their own self-discovery in who they are.

       Mark Zusak’s I Am The Messenger, creates a timeless protagonist name Ed Kennedy, a nineteen-year-old taxi cab driver and all-around average guy. In fact, he's the epitome of average -- faithful friends, stinky dog, dead-end job, no thought of the future, a mother who despise him and a girl who loves someone else.  After catching accidentally foiling a bank robber’s escape plan, Ed Kennedy is deemed a hero in his town and that is when his first ace arrives in the mail making Ed “the messenger”.  Each ace he gets in the mail is different and each has messages for him to undertake and deliver.  These series of task transform him from a self-absorbed hoodlum to a genuine hero.

       Zusak’s imaginative plot brings a sense of tension and surprise throughout the novel.  Zusak plays with a abundance of themes in his novel from coming of age to love, hope and discovery.  The characters and the world that Zusak portrays in the novel creates world that brings about real life issues out in the open. It deals a lot with the protagonist struggling with his identity in life, just like young adults and even adults now, who are at lost to who they are. Zusak wrote the novel in a way that not only you are traveling with Ed’s messages but you are also living and finding your own messages in life.

       All in all this is an enchanting novel to read, one that I couldn’t put down until I finished it. From the very first page to the last the journey with Ed Kennedy is everlasting.




Genre Category: Realistic Fiction