Volume 1 Number 9
August 11, 1995

Help Wanted: Wednesdays Only.
Peggy Dymond Leavey.
Toronto: Napoleon, 1994. 109pp, paper, $6.95
ISBN 0-92914-23-7.

Review by Lorraine Douglas.

excerpt:

I'll look like that someday, I thought. Everyone said I took after Luigi Cecchini, except he had thick black hair and mine was red, like my father's. Grandpa and I had the same wiry body, not very tall, but strong as an ox, they said. At least, he had been once. I'd seen him lift a crate of cabbages onto his shoulders as if they had been feathers.

Mom had given him those pyjamas for Christmas. There was a little blue snowflake design in the white flannelette. Like a little kid's.

``How come you didn't get dressed today, Grandpa?" I asked.

``I get dressed, Frankie. I always get dressed."

``But where's your coat? It's freezing outside."

Frankie was my mother's brother. He'd been killed in a motorcycle accident before I was even born.

``Mom will be home at five," I sighed. ``You want to watch T.V.?"

Mark Rogers is thirteen years old and embarrassed by his grandfather Luigi, who has Alzheimer's Disease. Luigi is often found wandering on the street; he is so confused he wears two pairs of pants and cannot remember his family. Mark's mother decides the best thing to do is move in with Luigi, a decision that throws Mark's life into turmoil -- he has to change schools and leave his friends. And, because Mark is small, he is a frequent target for Randy Smits, a bully in the new neighbourhood.