From the Publisher

Lots of people think Doug Hanson is a freak — he gets beat up after school and the girl of his dreams calls him a worm. Doug's only refuge is building elaborate model trains in his basement and hanging out with his best friend, Andy Morrow. Andy is nothing like Doug: He's a popular football star who could date any girl in school. Despite their differences, Doug and Andy talk about everything — except what happened at the Tuttle place a few years back.

As Doug retreats deeper and deeper into his own world, long-buried secrets come to light — and the more he tries to keep them invisible, the looser his grip on reality becomes. In this fierce, disturbing novel, Pete Hautman spins a poignant tale about inner demons, and how far one boy will go to control them.

Publishers Weekly

In a starred review, PW wrote, "Hautman once again proves his keen ability for characterization and for building suspense in this painfully sad novel," which centers on an introverted math whiz's downward spiral. Ages 12-up. (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Susie Wilde - Children's Literature

Doug Hanson has "crooked teeth and poor coordination," wears "stupid clothes," and has the popular, talented Andy Morrow as a best friend. Next to Andy, the most important thing in his life is his Madham Line, the locomotive set left to him by his grandfather. Dougie's obsessive nature has led him to turn this train set into a town, where he's in the process of finishing an eleven-foot suspension bridge built of matchsticks that he has sanded, stripped of tips, and glued together from over 22,400 matches. Dougie's precision and troubled quality are immediately apparent to readers. Soon we watch him spiral downward. He gets caught for peeping on a popular girl and phoning in a bomb threat. Why does he always get in trouble when his best friend Andy seems close by? And what is the troubling event that happened to Andy? Spare writing, carefully-selected details, and a curious voice lend suspense to this story, but readers will be little prepared for the realities of Dougie's life or the book's tragic end. 2005, Simon and Schuster, Ages 11 up.

Beth E. Andersen - VOYA

Doug Hanson is as profoundly disturbed as a teen can get. At seventeen, he still communicates with his best friend, Andy, killed two years ago in a fire that Doug was partly responsible for setting. Targeted in high school by his fellow students for his deeply weird behavior, Doug loses himself in the basement of his home, constructing an exquisitely detailed miniature railroad, complete with bridges and people and town buildings, all made out of headless matchsticks. Doug's home life is a misery. His bullying, punishing, professor father has cowed Doug's mother and will not tolerate Doug's obvious slide toward a mental breakdown, despite regular sessions with a therapist. Mr. Hanson cannot tolerate imperfection even when Doug is caught stalking a fellow student and the police come knocking. With excruciating care, Hautman builds an unbearable tension toward disaster. At the beginning of the book, Doug has designed a sigil, a seal using a combination of Doug's and Andy's initials. As the story careens toward inevitable tragedy, the sigil devolves into ever more obscure versions until it is an unreadable but arresting sign of impending horror. Schools and parents continue to ignore the costs of bullying at their own and their children's peril. Hautman takes the reader into the very core of the victim and the dynamics of heartless targeting, and forces all to accept responsibility for stopping the cycle of violence. VOYA CODES: 5Q 5P M J S (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Every YA (who reads) was dying to read it yesterday; Middle School, defined as grades 6 to 8; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2005, Simon & Schuster, 160p.,Ages 11 to 18.

School Library Journal

Gr 7 Up-Seventeen-year-old Dougie takes everything literally, lacks social graces, and is a loner, except, perhaps, for his one friend, athletic and popular Andy Morrow. But readers know almost immediately that something tragic has happened in the recent past: "Andy and I had some bad luck with fires when we were kids. We're more careful now." Other students feel threatened by Dougie's disturbing behavior and react by targeting him with cruelty and violence, which only serves to escalate his descent into unreality, isolation, and obsession. The teen has been working for nearly three years on his model railroad set, using 22,400 headless matches to build a bridge connecting portions of the "Madham Line." As his life deteriorates, this obsession and his nightly talks with Andy are the only things that keep him clinging to normalcy. He resists the help of his psychiatrist and hides his medication. Ultimately, he is forced to remember what actually happened on that fateful night. With its excellent plot development and unforgettable, heartbreaking protagonist, this is a compelling novel of mental illness.-Susan Riley, Mount Kisco Public Library, NY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Dougie Hanson is invisible to nearly everyone in this haunting, lonely tale. He's extremely close to his best friend, Andy, even though Andy's a popular athlete. When they aren't together, Dougie works on the elaborate model train he's been building for nearly three years; the 11-foot-long suspension bridge built of matchsticks is nearly done. The bridge contains 22,400 matches in all (Dougie likes both numbers and matches). As the bridge approaches completion, glimpses from Doug's eyes reveal a life more troubled than he admits. His parents worry, his therapist asks if he's taking his meds and a female schoolmate accuses him of stalking. The mentally ill Dougie, who evokes echoes of Faulkner with his unreliable narration, is confronted with truths he can't bear. The deceptively simple prose doesn't keep secrets from its readers, but Dougie's harrowing mysteries are no less tragic for their visibility. (Fiction. 12-16)

Product Details

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Invisible

Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing

Chapter One: My Best Friend

There is something about trains. The sound they make. The way they go by, one car after another after another after another. Every car different but somehow the same. And the tracks go on forever, connecting places, connecting people. Wherever you are, you could go to the nearest railroad track right now, and if you followed it long enough, you would find me.

There is another thing to know about trains. They are large and dangerous. They would crush you if they could, but they are confined by those two narrow strips of steel. Trains are like fire. You don't want to get in their way.

My grandfather left me his HO scale model railroad when he passed on. One locomotive, seven cars, and sixteen feet of track. That's another reason I like trains -- they connect me to him, wherever he is. You could say that my railroad, the Madham Line, is almost the most important thing in my life. Next to Andy Morrow, my best friend.

A guy like Andy might have more than one best friend. He is so popular that there are at least five kids at school who would probably claim him. But if you asked Andy who was his best friend, he would say, "Dougie Hanson, of course." And that would be me.

I'm a quiet kid, pretty much invisible -- except if you happen to notice me standing next to Andy. We grew up together, Andy and me. Next door, actually. We met at the age of one year and three months. Our birthdays are only seventeen days apart. We are like Velcro, like two poles of a magnet, like peanut butter and jelly, like superglue. We are best friends by every definition. Best friends. Best. Friends.

It doesn't matter to Andy Morrow that I have crooked teeth and poor coordination and wear stupid clothes. It wouldn't matter if I had a nose like a pig and smelled of Limburger cheese. Andy would still say, "Dougie is my best friend."

True, Andy might spend more time with other kids who claim to be his best friend. He might hang with the other football players, and his friends on the student council, and his golfing friends, and his theater friends, but he always comes home at night and opens his bedroom window and calls out across the low picket fence, "Hey, Dougie!"

And if my window is open, and if I'm awake, we talk.

It does not matter that we don't spend as much time together as we used to. I tell Andy all about the new tank car I bought for the Madham Line. I might talk about my mother's latest crossword puzzle, or a book I read about black holes, or a math test I took in school, and Andy would listen. That is what best friends do.

And if Andy wants to talk about the school play he is starring in, or his latest football game, or a girl he met...I'll listen to him, too.

It does not matter to Andy that we live in completely different realities. I'm Andy's best friend. It does not matter to Andy that we hardly ever actually do anything together.

Why should it? We are best friends, me and Andy. Best. Friends.

Copyright © by 2005 Peter Hautman

Continues...

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Excerpted from Invisible by Pete Hautman Copyright © 2005 by Pete Hautman. Excerpted by permission.
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