My Computer Journal of Family Dining

All smart and looking-to-be-smart kids and all parents, grandparents and teachers need to read My Computer Journal of Family Dining. In this tragi-comic novel, teenager Zy Slayter, via technology, struggles with 11 SEPTEMBER 2001 and his "drugger" father. His mainstays are his "ancient," wise-droll, hip/hep grandfather, with whom he works on The Great Mystery of the World; his Black friend Doak; and another omnipresent but secret constant. Along the way, we get tragic race relations, Blues and theremin music, Trolls and football as play and computer game, a new "Boo Radley," a Miss North Carolina candidate "sunk" by a chicken costume. . . . "[Y]ou cannot, finally, live life on the computer or in the virtual world. The real world feeds great parts of you, too. Nor can you, finally, bow down before evil and calamity. The spirit rebounds. There will come a morning when you step out into sunshine, and the spirit can do nothing less."