Heck, Superhero

Heck's mom is lost. She disappeared after they were locked out of their apartment because she couldn't pay the rent. Heck's used to taking care of himself, but what will happen to his small, fragile mother? Who will take care of her? Heck has to find her before she ends up in another dimension, one where she doesn't exist at all. The problem is, he's still in his flat stage. It's how all superheroes start out, but Heck is running short on time, so he has to perform the Good Deed that will get he and his mother topworld. The Good Deed is hard to do when you've been sleeping in a car, you have no money, and your tooth aches so badly that you can't breathe without feeling stabs of pain. But, Heck is determined to find a way to save his mom -- if he didn't, what kind of superhero would he be? Heck is a fabulous character, one who is rich in imagination and heart! Reviewed by: Julie M. Prince

Heck and his mom get icked out of there apartment and Heck say's his mom goes into hyperspeed. So Heck went to stay with his best friend Spence, where Heck doesn't have any money, so he steals twenty dollars from Spence. Heck goes to the malll and this lady comes up to him and asks if he wants to buy a pill and she said it will make him strong and he takes out the twenty dollarsand lays it on the besid him. Heck see's a security guard and the lady takes the money and starts running out of the mall. So Heck is trying to find a job to pay back Spence the money he stole and have money to live on while trying to find his mom. Heck went out that night to find a place to stay and he found a car that was his neighbors car. The next morning he was walking and he ran into this lady that he found out it was his mom.

Heck, Superhero, a book by Martine Leavitt, is about a kid named Heck who believes he is a superhero as he is told so by some people. He meets many interesting characters throughout the book as he searches for his mom over a period of three days, because when depressed, she goes through something called hyper time that makes time go by very fast for her. He believes that to find his mom and make everything alright, he must perform a "good deed" as a superhero. He goes to many places searching for his mom and looking for "good deeds" to perform. Heck believes he is a superhero because for one, his mom used to call him a "superkid" and because a counselor he went to see once called him a "superkid" too when talking about his art abilities. As he is searches for his mom that is currently suffering from hyper time, he meets an 18-year-old with mental problems called Marion. Marion believes he has aliens in his pocket and must release them. Throughout the story when Heck tries to do "good deeds" to make up for bad things he has done, he ends up doing something bad instead. For example, in the beginning, he is tricked into buying a drug, and eventually takes it. Throughout most of the story he can't think clearly because he is high. He tries to find ways to make money to call his mom and his only shelter is the car of someone who lives in apartment, because he and his mom have been evicted. Eventually his art teacher starts to worry about him not coming to school for a while, but he just lies about the situation. What will happen to Heck, his mom, and his friend Marion? What will happen when Marion releases the aliens? Will Heck ever be reunited with his mom? The only way to find out is to read the book! I liked this book because of the interesting characters, and how fast paced it was. I also liked the originality. This book left me wondering what happened to Heck and his mom after it ended, and if there really is such thing as hyper time. I would recommend reading this book.

"Heck wasn't a superhero, or if he was, he was definitely in his flat stage, his no-curves-no-life-dead-on-the-page-stage. Of course, all superheros started off that way. It said so in his How to Draw Superheros book." "Heck Superhero, lost and abandoned in the world of mortals, without his supersuit and the tokens of his strength..."Heck sat up straight and looked around the mall. No one was looking at him, but he could almost hear Mr. Bandras's voice: 'Daydreaming again, Heck? There's a time and a place for that, and this isn't it.'"Heck had to admit that now was not a good time to be daydreaming. Not when they'd lost their apartment and when his portfolio with all his semester artwork was locked in it and when bacteria were mining their way down through his molars and his jawbone. He had to stay in this microverse and take care of his mom. Flat or not, he had to get to his mom soon. He had to get her out of hypertime, keep her from thinking crazy stuff like that he was better off without her or something. He had to talk to her before she floated like a dry leaf right out of this dimension."He had to think, make a plan, a good plan, a smart plan--a superplan..."There was always the Good Deed."Of course, there was that bad deed still in his pocket to worry about."A delicious smell from the mall's food court drifted right up his nostrils. He was hungry."He'd been hungry before, but not this hungry. He felt turned inside out, like his stomach was on the outside of him and his human face on the inside. Being this hungry put his stomach in charge of his brain and his hands and his feet. If you weren't a superhero, being this hungry could make you spend the money you stole from your best friend..." Despite all of that boundless affection that I feel for really great new books, it is exceedingly rare for me to be wishing for another couple of hundred pages. This is one of those uncommon instances. Having charged at breakneck speed through the first half of this book's 144 pages, I was already mourning how little remained with a measure of despair comparable to that with which I greet the longest day of the year--knowing that it's all downhill from there. "It was an unsettling feeling, like he'd just lost track of the spin of the earth. This was how his mom felt all the time, he thought. It must be, for her, like trying to jump onto a spinning merry-go-round." But I can also understand Martine Leavitt's need to let go after these 144 power-packed pages. I can't remember a previous instance where I found myself musing about a young character's mind moving at a velocity reminiscent of Neil Cassidy's mouth. HECK SUPERHERO lays bare ninety-six critical hours in the life of this thirteen-year-old all-too-human kid who has channeled a lifetime of chronic neglect by his severely depressed mother into becoming a caregiver and doer of Good Deeds as well as becoming a truly extraordinary artist. In the words of his art teacher Mr. Bandras,