What Hearts Paperback – May 19, 1995

I first read this young adult novel in 1995, when I was, in fact, a young adult. I was very much an "Asa" myself and identified strongly with him. The writing, the emotions, the heartbreaking realism--all superb. I read it again yesterday, and yes, it's still my favorite young adult novel. It might not be for everyone. It isn't a feel-good story, and it's almost never pretty. I've seen several instances where people couldn't quite believe Asa as a realistic character, but I assure you, there are many little Asa's running around in the world right now, and this book is for them.I most recently purchased the Kindle Edition. Unfortunately, there are several typos, seemingly from whatever OCR software was used to create it. There are two instances where "and" became "arid" and at least two cases where "kind" became "land." There are also several stray apostrophes spread throughout (perhaps from flecks or imperfections in the original pages), as well as a few random characters and symbols attached to the ends of words. These issues don't make the Kindle Edition unreadable, but they are noticeable and sometimes distracting.If you simply must have it now, definitely go for the e-book. If you can wait, get a paper copy.

This book has some little gems in it that make you cheer for Asa, a child who's life is constantly changing when his mother leaves his father. But somehow things rarely work out for the very intelligent boys as he moves through life's change in circumstances. He is loved by his mother, but has an over demanding and very demeaning stepfather. Asa is a good kid and tries to always support his mother in many self-sacrificing ways. But it is almost like every time things start going good for him, something comes up and suddenly snatches happiness away. The author has written a thought provoking story about children facing the breakup of their family, divorce, and trying to adjust as a stepchild. There are some lovely moments with Asa's relationship with his mother and connections to his stepfather. But overall, this book made me feel sad and depressed. It might be good for a child who has gone through divorce and a parent's remarriage, to help them sort out the enormous emotional toil and changing with life's changes, but this just wasn't the book for me.

This is a very good book by Bruce Brooks. I recommend this book for young adult readers because the concept could be difficult for 6th grade and under but otherwise it is a great family book!

Would love to contact the author! This is the story of my fifth grade class!

I do not recommend this book. Although the author did seem to have a genuine knowledge of the topic he wrote on, the book ultimately fell flat due to the storyline and the characters. There are two main reasons for my dislike. First off, I do not find pleasure in reading a book about a kid who grows up in a dysfunctional family with an unstable mother and an abusive step dad. The whole book is made up of short stories that all have a depressing background and are not very interesting. I do not know why the author wrote on this subject but it is possible that he may have had a childhood much like the main character and so he wanted to show the trials of life in a bad family. My second reason for disliking the book is that the four short stories are only connected by the fact that the main character stays the same. They jump around a year or more at a time in order to try to show most of Asa's childhood. Also most of the short stories end poorly in a way that makes you wonder, never to find out, what happened after the scene ends. In other words there is no real resolution to the story.

When Asa was seven years old, he came home from first grade, ready to impress his mother and father with what he had done on the last day of school. Instead of finding them inside and ready to listen, his mother was outside with a suitcase and their house was cleaned out. She explained that she and his father were getting a divorce and he was leaving with her that day. They flew to meet up with her high school sweetheart, who immediately disliked Asa. Asa, for his part, immediately disliked his future stepfather, too.At nine, Asa was experienced at changing schools and making friends. Most of his classmates liked him, but he joined the class partway through the year when everyone was already matched up with partners or groups for the talent show to be presented to the rest of the school and the students' parents. One boy, Joel, offers to let Asa recite a poem with him, but when Asa reads the poem he hates it and convinces Joel to do another poem with him. The problem is that Joel is not very smart and can't seem to be able to memorize the new poem.When he is eleven, Asa discovers baseball and finally is able to have something that connects him to his stepfather, who is suspicious of Asa's love of reading and the amount of time he spends by himself.At twelve, Asa realizes he is in love with a girl in his class and he struggles with how to let her know how he feels. At the same time, he watches his mother struggle with depression. Will Asa's family ever be normal like it was when he was a child?I liked the snippets of important times in Asa's life instead of focusing on one year or another more limited time frame. Asa was a very interesting character, because he was so bright and able to get along with other kids so well, but he was unable to win over his stepfather. I liked, though, that Asa was always true to himself, despite the consequences.I couldn't believe that any mother would let her new husband be so consistently mean to her child for so long. I also didn't like that Asa's real father was never mentioned. I thought he should have had at least a little impact on Asa's life, whether it was because he was in Asa's life or because he wasn't.