1/9/01
Lindsay

Jack on the Tracks
by Jack Santos

This book is about a kid and his family that moved to Miami. The family includes Jack, his little brother Pete, his older sister Betsy, and his mom and his dad.

Jack and his family moved to Miami. The first day they arrived,Tack came over and gave him a cat as a welcome to the neighborhood present. Tack and Jack got to be very good friends and they did a lot of things together.

Betsy is a couple of years older then Jack and she acts like she is his mom. What really moved me is that I thought Jack would be a really brave kid but he turned out to be a crybaby. He cried when his cat died, he cried when he got ticks all over him and he cried when he saw Tack’s brother dead on the floor. He got teased by Betsy all of the time. When he got ticks all over him Betsy said” Oh we learned how to burn ticks off in girl scouts.”

One day, on Halloween, they heard a report on T.V. that two robbers had escaped from jail and that there would be no trick or treating for anybody. When he went to get the pizza, the owner said to be careful because one of the robbers had just came through the window of a police car.

Jack thought he saw the robbers, Tack had built a hole under the train tracks. He dove in to there but it turned out that it was just Tack and his brother trying to scare him. They had caught the real robbers already.

On Pete’s birthday, everybody got him a good present except for Jack. He gave him a penny and said that it would grow in to a penny tree. He planted it and watered it. One night Jack went outside and cut off a tree branch and taped pennies on it. In the morning, Pete screamed” It grew! It grew! “

Jack came out and said “yeah!” After Jack said “if you wait long enough they will turn in to nickels.”

He shouldn't have said that because, of course, Peter believed him. That night he had to change it to nickels. The next day he wanted to wait until they turned in to quarters! Pete just wanted them to change in to something that was worth more.

One day, Jack said he wanted to become more of an adult. When they were going out to dinner, Jack said he didn't feel well. He didn’t want to go. He went into the bathroom and got water in his mouth and spit it into the toilet. His mom said “ that didn’t sound so good. Maybe you should stay home and rest.”

He said “Ok.”

When Jack heard the car leave, he got a chair from the table, put it in front of the TV in the kitchen and set it in front of the refrigerator. He started eating and watching TV. When he heard the car get home, he didn’t realize that the cat had crawled into the refrigerator. He put everything back and ran into his room acting like nothing had happened. In the morning, everybody saw what had happened to the cat. Jack on the Tracks is a book that shows that sometimes people act tough on the outside but really are soft on the inside. I highly recommend it.

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This page last updated: 08/28/04.