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ASIN 0399231862
UPC
9780399231865
Two fourteen-year-old friends pursue the game of Creeping through the back yards of homes in their neighborhood, hoping to prove their courage and ingenuity while trying to avoid getting caught Editorial ReviewsFrom Booklist
Gr. 7^-10. In a country where houses are built close together and fences delineate what little privacy the backyard provides, creeping is an unofficial sport. Teens challenge themselves and each other to the marathon of running the length of a neighborhood through these backyards, scampering over fences, daring angry dogs, and outrunning frustrated homeowners. When the narrator and Jamie creep Derwent Drive, a legendary, difficult creep, Jamie is caught, leaving the narrator with the reputation for going haywire and his buddy in trouble with his family and the police. Soon rumor has it that Jamie is dead, but the narrator knows differently--they'll creep again. This strange, suspenseful British import will likely be popular with a small group of marginalized teens, who will identify with the surreptitious counterculture of creeping, and others who, if they can get beyond the Briticisms, will be drawn into the psychological suspense of an outcast teen trying desperately to salvage his tarnished, albeit slim, reputation. Frances Bradburn
From Kirkus Reviews
A young boy discovers self-confidence and endures the loss of his best friend in Gray's uneven debut. As the story opens, the 14- year-old narrator--whom Gray never refers to by name--and his best friend, Jamie, are on a ``Creep''--running and sneaking through neighbors' yards under cover of night. But when Jamie gets arrested, the protagonist is labeled a ``Nambie'' at school, blasted by other creepers for letting his ``Buddie'' get ``Snared.'' Then a fire destroys Jamie's home, killing him. The narrator's grief and terror are dramatically conveyed; similarly, when Jamie suddenly appears at his friend's house the following evening, claiming to have escaped the fire completely, readers will feel the narrator's unbounded joy. Their only course of action seems clear, a creep to end all creeps. The thrill of victory is marred only by Jamie's absence; he really did die in the fire, of course, and now exists only in the protagonist's tormented imagination. Many readers will find the lead character's departure from reality too clumsy and contrived to accept. Despite the involving characters and setting, Gray doesn't convey the significance of creeping convincingly, thereby rendering the events of the story none too compelling. (Fiction. 10-12) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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