Awards-

• Best Fiction for Young Adults
  Young Adult Library Services Association

Excerpts-

• From the book

  1    
  My Favorite Uncle    
  
  Ever since I was a little kid, I've had it drilled into me that my uncle Lester was my favorite uncle. My mother would thrust the phone at me and say, "Uncle Lester wants to talk to you," her voice infused with the same forced enthusiasm she used to describe the deliciousness of canned peas. "Tell him you love him."  
  
  "I love you, Uncle Lester," I'd say.  
  
  "Tell him he's your favorite uncle."  
  
  "You're my favorite uncle."  
  
  It got worse as I got older. I never knew what to say to him, and he never seemed all that interested in talking to me. When I became a teenager I felt silly telling him he was my favorite uncle, although my mother still urged me to do so. I'd say things like "Hey, how's it goin'?" and he'd grunt some response. He might ask me a question about school. I imagine it was a great relief to both of us when my mother took back the phone. Our brief conversations always left me feeling embarrassed, and just a little bit creepy.  
  
  He was actually my great-uncle, having been my mother's favorite uncle long before he was mine.  
  
  I didn't know how much money he had, but he was rich enough that he never had to be nice to anyone. Our favorite uncle never visited us, and I think my mother initiated all the phone conversations with him. Later, after he got really sick, he wouldn't even talk to her. My mother would call almost daily, but she could never get past his housekeeper.   I had only met Uncle Lester face to face one time, at his sixty-fifth birthday party. I was six years old, and to me, his house seemed like a castle on a mountaintop. I said the obligatory "Happy birthday" and "I love you" and "You're my favorite uncle" and then steered clear of him.  
  
  "His heart is as cold as a brick," my father said on the drive home.  
  
  That phrase has stuck with me, I think, because my father used the word cold instead of hard.  
  
  My elementary school was a brick building. Every day on the way home, I would drag my fingers over the hard, and yes, cold surface.  
  
  I'm in high school now, but still whenever I walk by a brick building, I feel compelled to touch it. Even now, as I write this, I can almost feel the hard coolness, the sharp edges, and the roughness of the cement between the bricks.

About the Author-

• Louis Sachar is the author of the award-winning Small Steps, the New York Times #1 bestseller Holes, There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom, The Wayside School stories, and many others. Many of these titles are available on audio from Listening Library.

Reviews-

• Louis Sachar is an enchanting writer and a charming reader. At his parents' insistence, 17-year-old Alton is spending the summer as his blind, rich bridge-playing Uncle Lester's cardturner. This means driving him to his club four times a week and inadvertently learning some things--about bridge and about his family history. Since the story is narrated by Alton, Sachar performs the entire novel in the droll, jaded, doubtful tones of a teenage boy feeling his way in new territory. A foghorn sound effect amusingly announces impending long-winded bridge explanations, but the bridge playing is woven so masterfully into the story that even the most uninterested listener will learn a thing or two about the game. K.O. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
• 

  Starred review from April 5, 2010
  “I realize that reading about a bridge game isn't exactly thrilling,” 17-year-old narrator Alton tells readers early on. Luckily, this funny and thoughtful novel is as much about building bridges—between generations and maybe even between life and death—as it is about playing cards. Alton gets roped into serving as a card turner for his great-uncle, Lester Trapp, a bridge whiz who recently lost his eyesight (Alton's job is to read Trapp's cards for him). Though Alton barely knows Trapp, his opportunistic mother won't miss a chance for Alton to get in good with his “favorite uncle,” who's wealthy and in poor health. To Alton's surprise, he becomes enamored of the game and begins to bond with his crusty uncle—who shares insight into synchronicity and the connection between reality and perception. With dry, understated humor, Alton makes the intricacies of bridge accessible, while his relationships with and observations about family members and friends (including an ex-girlfriend, a manipulative best friend, and especially Trapp's former card turner) form a portrait of a reflective teenager whose life is infinitely enriched by connections he never expected to make. Ages 12–up.

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