Ship Out of Luck by Neal Shusterman (review)

Antsy Bonano, the wisecracking eighth-grade Brooklynite from The Schwa Was Here (BCCB 12/04) and Antsy Does Time, is back for an adventure on the high seas. Old Man Crawley, the crotchety shut-in who owns Antsy's father's restaurant, has invited (coerced) Antsy and his family to join him on a cruise for his eightieth birthday on the Plethora of the Deep. Aboard the ship, Antsy is drawn in by Tilde, a petty thief whom he first assumes is a stowaway but later discovers to be the daughter of the Plethora's captain. Tilde drags Antsy along in her escapades, including a harrowing journey through a slum in Jamaica where she reveals the real reasons for her thievery: she's the mastermind of an operation that smuggles immigrants out of her hometown, Cozumel, into Miami. She asks for Antsy's help and gets it, but when they're caught on video sneaking nine refugees aboard, Antsy takes the fall for both of them, resulting in an international media frenzy. Antsy is again a remarkably likable narrator despite his smart-aleck ways, combining clever quips with genuine but bumbling solidarity with the people he cares about. The plot gets a little ahead of itself by the end, with one too many pieces falling too niftily into place, but the story, an effective exploration of what happens when we let ourselves get carried away by the people around us, is alternately hilarious and thought-provoking. Shusterman deftly circumvents questions about the ethics of undocumented immigration by instead foregrounding more accessible questions of why Antsy—or anyone—does any of the harebrained things he does, rather than whether he should have done them. Obviously a treat for those who've been taken in by Antsy's antics in the past, this is a rollicking summer read that's also more contemplative than most.