Finding Stinko

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More About This Book

Overview

Newboy hasn’t spoken in three years. One morning he opened his mouth and nothing came out. He doesn’t know why he stopped talking, but what he does know is that he’s through with the state child-care system. In twelve years he’s lived in eleven foster homes, and the Knoxes are the worst of the bunch. Now, with no voice, no family, and no exact plan, Newboy is running away for good. Living on the streets means danger and excitement around every corner, but the one thing Newboy never expected to find is a companion in the form of an old ventriloquist dummy lying in a Dumpster – a puppet with no hands, backward feet, and a chunk of its nose missing. Amazingly, this beat-up doll whom he dubs “Stinko” possesses a kind of magic that helps Newboy rediscover his ability to communicate.

 

This is a fast-paced adventure about a runaway kid figuring out not just what he’s searching for but also what he has to say.

 

Finding Stinko is a 2008 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

As De Guzman's (The Bamboozlers) dark yet hopeful tale opens, a teen leaves her newborn in the lobby of a posh apartment building. She named him Newboy "because he was starting out new. All she wanted was for his life to be better than her own." But placed in the state's child-care system, Newboy is shuffled from one foster home to another and is branded a troublemaker for his frequent attempts to run away. At the age of nine, the boy stops talking ("He didn't do it on purpose.... He just opened his mouth one morning and nothing came out"). Three years later, Newboy sneaks out of his 11th foster home and heads to a nearby city, where he crawls into a dumpster to sleep. Amidst the garbage, he finds a battered ventriloquist's dummy and names him Stinko. Suddenly, Newboy can talk-in the voice of Stinko-and is delighted to be able to have a conversation ("What difference did it make if he was holding both ends of it?"). Using this dual-voice device to create revealing dialogue between the two personae, the author inventively fleshes out the youngster's character. Life on the streets has its perils-Newboy mistakenly trusts the scheming, dishonest leader of a group of young runaways and is stalked by the nasty foster parents from whom he escaped. Yet through his rapport with Stinko and several new homeless friends, Newboy finds confidence, happiness, hope and his own voice. The lad's plaintive musings about his mother's whereabouts and fate adds a tender note to this creatively layered, touching story. Ages 10-up. (May)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
Children's Literature
Set in the grim street world of an unnamed city, Guzman takes us on the hero's journey of Newboy who has run away from his horrible foster home. Newboy cannot speak, having lost the ability sometime during his twelve years in foster care. Newboy is cold, he doesn't have enough to eat, and he has nowhere to sleep. But he does find Stinko, a broken ventriloquist dummy. With Stinko, Newboy finds a voice. He uses the voice for good, even as the streets around him are full of fiendish plotters and power-grabbing gangs. Newboy makes friends, helps others, and plans a future where he can live in the warm sun. Whether Newboy will get to live out those plans is uncertain. This isn't a happy book, but it does offer the hope of finding some good people, including Newboy and Stinko, in an otherwise harsh setting. The book includes many threats, some violence and a brief view of a teenage mother, but no sex or drugs.
More Reviews (3) Fewer Reviews
KLIATT
Newboy has lived in 11 foster homes over the last 12 years, but the Knox home is the worst he's experienced. It's run like a military establishment, and Newboy is determined to escape. Trying to avoid trouble, he hasn't spoken in three years, but when he does finally run off, he finds a ventriloquist's dummy in a Dumpster and discovers that he can speak by pretending it's the damaged doll doing the talking. Finding his voice again, even through Stinko, as he names the dummy, helps Newboy find hope. He meets other street kids and makes friends. Together they have various dangerous adventures, trying to avoid exploitation and find food and a warm place to sleep. Though their lives are grim, Newboy manages to avoid the wiles of a bully named Silverquick and capture by the Knoxes, and in the end he and his friends—and Stinko—head out to look for a better future. The optimistic ending of this otherwise dark story of life on the streets is a relief, and Newboy's desperate adventures will keep readers turning the pages of this unusual and haunting novel.
School Library Journal

Gr 5-8
In a prologue that sets the scene, Newboy's mother abandons him as an infant in a ritzy apartment building. After a brief rundown of his numerous foster placements, the story picks up with the boy, now 12, as he is dumped with the Knoxes, whose rigid schedule and uncaring routines provide his worst "home" yet. Some three years earlier, Newboy had simply stopped talking. Despite being tested and examined, he resists speaking and manages daily life in silence. Determined to escape the prisonlike foster home, he runs away and discovers "Stinko," a ventriloquist's dummy, in a garbage bin. Suddenly the words that Newboy would never let past his lips are coming out of Stinko's mouth. Life on the street is full of danger. Occasionally spotting the Knoxes' van as they search for him, Newboy finds allies and makes connections that help him survive. Stinko knows what needs to happen, even if he isn't very tactful or careful about expressing himself. In a world where redemption seems impossible, this parable of survival is riveting and yet manages a tender element while never lacking in bravado. Screenwriter de Guzman conveys a cinematic sense of events that keeps the pace moving and gives this short novel great reluctant-reader appeal.
—Carol A. EdwardsCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews
Abandoned as an infant, Newboy becomes part of the state's child-care system and over the next 11 years is placed in one foster home after another. At nine, he stops talking. Three years later, he's living at the Knox's, whose home is run with a military precision Newboy finds oppressive. He runs away and while hiding out in a dumpster, discovers a broken doll that once talked by pulling a string. Newboy finds that he can talk through the doll who he names Stinko, and Stinko becomes his conscience. Newboy hides from the Knox's for a time, but after he is re-captured, the friends he made while living on the street rescue him. Newboy's world is bleak, but things take a positive turn as he accepts the other homeless children as friends and once again is able to speak without the aid of Stinko. De Guzman's commentary on the potential pitfalls of America's foster-care system is honest in its portrayal of a boy who's been on his own since birth, his life on the street a powerful thumbnail view of that harsh existence. (Fiction. 11-14)

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780374323059
  • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • Publication date: 4/17/2007
  • Edition description: First Edition
  • Pages: 144
  • Age range: 10 - 15 Years
  • Lexile: 560L (what's this?)
  • Product dimensions: 5.66 (w) x 8.61 (h) x 0.69 (d)

Meet the Author

MICHAEL DE GUZMAN is a former screenwriter and the author of several books for young readers, including The Bamboozlers. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Read an Excerpt

Finding Stinko

By Michael de Guzman

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

Copyright © 2007 Michael de Guzman
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780374323059
Finding Stinko
Three years later ...1 / Hard KnoxThe military nature of the foster establishment run by Mr. and Mrs. Knox was a big problem for Newboy. Mrs. Knox wrote a daily schedule. Mr. Knox posted it on the corkboard by the doorless doorways to the two rooms where the boys slept, three to a room. The schedule told them where to be and when to be there and what they were supposed to do.Wake-up was at 5:30, 6:30 on weekends. Breakfast was a half hour later. That lasted twenty minutes. Cleanup lasted ten. They had half an hour to make their beds and clean their rooms. There was another half hour of general chores. At 7:30 on weekdays, Mr. Knox drove them to school in the green van. At 3:30 he picked them up. They were monitored closely by teachers in between. At 4:00 the boys resumed their household chores. Dinner was at 6:00. Cleanup and homework followed. Bedtime was at 9:30. Weekend nights they were allowed an hour of television if they'd all been good.Newboy's big problem was alone time. There wasn't any. The boys were supervised by one of the Knoxes, or they supervised each other by working in pairs. If one of them broke a rule or misbehaved or didn't do the job the way it was supposed to be done, both boys were punished. Punishment was swift and severe. Mrs. Knox decided what it would be. Mr. Knox administered the prescribed dosage. The other boys lived in constant fear. If one of them saw Newboy attempting to escape, he'd sound the alarm in an instant.Newboy had spent weeks figuring the best way out. He'd run each possible scenario through his mind's eye, watching himself test each exit and fail, abandoning each until in the end he came to a single conclusion. He'd have one chance. He'd woken up knowing that this was the day he'd take it.Sitting in the backseat of the green van after school, Newboy reviewed his plan. He took himself through it step by step. He pictured every obstacle and the action he'd have to take to get past it."How was school today, boys?" Mr. Knox asked. He asked them every day. He was a deliberate man with a fixed mind, a slow mover, a reptile on a cold day."Good," one of them said. It was as much of an answer as they'd give. In the system, a boy learned not to volunteer information. Never use two words when one would do.Newboy couldn't have answered if he'd wanted to,which he didn't. His voice was still missing. "I did nothing in school today," he said inside his head. "Like always." They'd put him in a class for the kids with special needs."School's important, boys," Mr. Knox said."Here it comes," Newboy said inside his head."You don't stand a chance without a good education," Mr. Knox said."Which you'll never get," Newboy said inside his head, mimicking Mr. Knox's high-pitched whine to perfection."Which you'll never get," Mr. Knox said. He snickered.The Knoxes made a business of their boys. For each foster kid in their care, they received a monthly check from the state to reimburse them for room, board, clothes, and living expenses. It was no secret to the boys that much of that money was added to what Mr. Knox made from his part-time job, and that the Knoxes worked tirelessly to hide the fact and to present the authorities with a rosy picture. On their occasional visits, state inspectors were treated like royalty, with both the boys and the house scrubbed and polished. Which was why the Knoxes were permitted to look after such a large number of wards.Mrs. Knox handled the paperwork. Tonight it was a form with Newboy's name on it. Before dinner she sat Newboy down at the oversize kitchen table,which looked like it belonged in a school cafeteria."The state wants a progress report," she said, making it sound like it was his fault. "Well, we know how to take care of the state, don't we?" She was roly-poly, with a kindly face."Tell them I'm gone," Newboy said inside his head. "Tell them to forget me.""You're still not talking, I take it?" she said. She always made it sound like he was faking."I wouldn't talk to you if I could," Newboy said inside his head."I've got you until you're eighteen," Mrs. Knox said. "That's six more years. You'll be talking before that. You'll be doing lots of things you're not doing now." She filled in a section of the form.She'd tell the state that he was making progress. He knew that. He knew she'd tell them he was happy. She'd. make it up, then read it to him so he could feel worse about the truth of his circumstances. She took obvious pleasure in this.Dinner was macaroni and cheese. Newboy did his homework and showed it to Mr. Knox, as each boy had to do. Newboy suspected that Mr. Knox couldn't read very well because it took him such a long time to get through a page, no matter what was on it. Mr. Knox always said the homework wasn't up to snuff, no matter how good it was.After that, Newboy read his much-used copy of RobinsonCrusoe until lights-out. He'd brought it with him from the last place. It was a pocket-sized hardcover edition, printed in London in 1923. Newboy often marveled that such an old thing could have survived all these years and made its way to him.Copyright © 2007 by Michael de Guzman

Continues...
Excerpted from Finding Stinko by Michael de Guzman Copyright © 2007 by Michael de Guzman. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Sort by: Showing all of 3 Customer Reviews

  • Posted October 28, 2008

    more from this reviewer

    Reviewed by Grandma Bev for TeensReadToo.com

    A destitute teen mother abandons her infant in an apartment building, leaving a note with him, printed in childish block letters. "His name is Newboy. He is one week old. Please take care of him. I can't."

    By the time Newboy is twelve years old he has stopped talking, and after a series of uncaring foster homes, he is sent to the worst one yet. Medical examinations and testing do not reveal a cause for his silence, but for Newboy, life is just easier that way. The Knoxes keep their flock of foster children on a very rigid schedule and all Newboy can think about is escaping to a freedom that he imagines will be much better.

    When he does escape, he takes refuge in a garbage bin where he finds a foul-smelling and damaged ventriloquist's dummy. He names the doll "Stinko." Newboy is able to talk through the dummy and express himself for the first time in several years. Newboy meets other runaways like himself living on the dangerous streets and they form alliances that help them survive. Mr. and Mrs. Knox are relentlessly searching for him...after all, the State pays them for his care.

    This is a touching story of hardship, survival, and the friendships of children struggling against nearly insurmountable odds. Newboy's innate sense of right and wrong and his moral values remain intact in spite of his troubles and the young hoodlums that confront him.

    de Guzman keeps the tempo fast-paced and exciting, with a cast of wonderful, compelling characters, as Newboy dodges his foster parents and young thugs that mean him harm and races toward a satisfying climax. I highly recommend this book...the short length and rapid pace will make it especially attractive to reluctant readers.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted October 7, 2007

    I loved this book

    This is a lovely read. Interesting emotional material for young males. Great characters in a scary American street-kid world. I like the kids, author, deGuzman writes in this novel and his others. All boys, at about 10/11 years old. All smart, brave with lots of heart.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted October 21, 2007

    Courtesy of Teens Read Too

    A destitute teen mother abandons her infant in an apartment building, leaving a note with him, printed in childish block letters. 'His name is Newboy. He is one week old. Please take care of him. I can't.' By the time Newboy is twelve years old he has stopped talking, and after a series of uncaring foster homes, he is sent to the worst one yet. Medical examinations and testing do not reveal a cause for his silence, but for Newboy, life is just easier that way. The Knoxes keep their flock of foster children on a very rigid schedule and all Newboy can think about is escaping to a freedom that he imagines will be much better. When he does escape, he takes refuge in a garbage bin where he finds a foul-smelling and damaged ventriloquist's dummy. He names the doll 'Stinko.' Newboy is able to talk through the dummy and express himself for the first time in several years. Newboy meets other runaways like himself living on the dangerous streets and they form alliances that help them survive. Mr. and Mrs. Knox are relentlessly searching for him...after all, the State pays them for his care. This is a touching story of hardship, survival, and the friendships of children struggling against nearly insurmountable odds. Newboy's innate sense of right and wrong and his moral values remain intact in spite of his troubles and the young hoodlums that confront him. de Guzman keeps the tempo fast-paced and exciting, with a cast of wonderful, compelling characters, as Newboy dodges his foster parents and young thugs that mean him harm and races toward a satisfying climax. I highly recommend this book...the short length and rapid pace will make it especially attractive to reluctant readers. **Reviewed by: Grandma Bev

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
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