Shusterman, Neal. The Schwa was here.

SHUSTERMAN, Neal. The Schwa was here. Penguin Putnam, Dutton. 276p. c2004. 0-525-47182-0. $16.99. J

A schwa is "a diacritic marking silence instead of a vowel sound," according to Webster's, and the name is appropriate for Calvin Schwa, who is "functionally invisible"--nobody ever notices him, even when they're standing next to him. Anthony, known as Antsy, "an eighth-grade wiseass" living in Brooklyn, befriends the Schwa, as he calls him. Antsy himself sometimes feels invisible as the middle child in his family, while the Schwa's mother vanished when he was five.

There are lots of plotlines here, as the two pull pranks based on the Schwa's ability to be overlooked, and end up walking dogs for cranky Old Man Crawley and serving as escorts for his feisty blind granddaughter while becoming rivals for her affection; there are also subplots about Antsy's parents, Antsy's attempts to find out what happened to the Schwa's mother, attempts to destroy a crash test dummy, and more. There is also lots of humor: a typical chapter heading is "Earthquakes, Nuclear Winter, and the End of Life as We Know It, over Linguini," and the dialog is fast and funny. This ode to friendship has got lots going on, and younger YAs will be entertained by Antsy's antics and his wisecracking comments on them.

J--Recommended for junior high school students. The contents are of particular interest to young adolescents and their teachers.