All Three Stooges by Erica S. Perl (review)

Noah Cohen's seventh-grade year plummets from bad to worse to utter confusion and misery following the suicide of Gil, the father of Noah's best friend Dash. Raised by two mothers and no father, Noah has privately regarded Gil as a surrogate dad of the coolest order and reveled in sleepovers at which Dash, Gil, and Noah bonded over junk food and classic comedy clips. Now Dash is distant in his grief, turning for comfort to Noa Cohen, a girl whose eerily serendipitous name and ubiquitous presence throughout public and Hebrew school have been for Noah a trial of, well, biblical proportions. What should have been a trio of adolescents preparing together for their b'nai mitzvah has now become a club of two, with Noah grieving alone on the sidelines unable to reach his friend and compounding a tense situation with missteps at every turn. Noah's grief is palpable, and his struggle between supporting his friend and sorting through his own feelings is effectively portrayed. However, the book is often programmatic about bereavement, and the adults' treatment of Noah seems unjust. Yes, he makes several bad decisions (his misuse of Dash's cellphone is flat out wrong, and then there's the whole business of a go-kart pileup due to his inattention), but the punishment meted out (indefinite postponement of his bar mitzvah) will strike some kids as disproportionate to his "crimes." Nonetheless, readers who've been in the heart or on the fringes of grief will recognize how difficult it is to make correct calls when there's no playbook. EB