He tries a “Life” list, and suddenly he is full of high ideals:ġ. This bothers Leo, and so, there on the garage, he improvises a different life for his father.Ī few pages later, we have the summation of Leo’s feelings as he makes his own list: Leo notices that “to be a father” or “to be an accountant” is not on Papa’s list. There are no check marks next to any of these.
Leo wonders if he ever wanted to be a father because to Leo, it seems that his father is burdened by life, rather than enjoying it, as he did as a child: According to his journal, Leo’s father had big dreams as a child: he wanted to be a singer, dancer, writer, and athlete. I read children’s literature now as a parent, and this colors my reaction to the stories, especially when the stories are about parent-child relationships, as this one is. Leo’s father’s journal hints at an aunt whom Leo has never met, and thus Leo’s search for the truth precipitates what we hope will become an alternate ending to his family’s story. Leo discovers a journal his father kept when he was thirteen years old, and therein Leo meets a person he cannot recognize as his own father. The aspect of Leo’s life that is the most confusing to him is his relationship with his father. The novel itself is written in short chapters which alternate between reality and Leo’s own imagined scenes.
Known as Fog Boy (because of his tendency to get lost in thought and ignore the world around him), he spends most of his time on the roof of his family’s garage, imagining alternate endings to stories in which he plays the hero.
His only real interest is acting, but to his great disappointment, he is only assigned a small roll in the much-anticipated school play. The narrator of the story, Leo, is a a twelve-year-old who feels overshadowed by his musically and athletically gifted siblings. This thoughful little book by the author of Walk Two Moons is a masterfully crafted peek into the life and heart of a large, Italian family.
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