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Pay It Forward |
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 Pay It Forward byCatherine Ryan Hyde Simon & Schuster 288 pages, February 2000 ISBN 0684862719 Reviewed by Zaheera Jiwaji A passage from twelve-year old Trevor McKinney's diary reads: It's really hard to know what's a good idea when you are growing and these ideas don't hold still and neither do you. "A good idea" is an understatement for what unfolds in Catherine Ryan Hyde's book Pay It Forward. Trevor, a precocious and sensitive boy, lives with his single mother, Arlene. He is given an assignment by his social-studies teacher, Rueben, to "think of an idea for world change, and put it into action". It is an assignment which Rueben presents almost cynically to his class every year, as a challenge for extra credit. Trevor surprises them all when he develops a simple idea, with startling ramifications. It involves a chain reaction: Trevor does a good deed for three people, and as their payback, they must perform a good deed for three other people, and so on and so on. Unknown to Trevor, who believes that his idea has failed because his three projects appear to have withered, the "pay it forward" idea mushrooms and succeeds beyond everyone's expectations. There are some wonderful tangents and twists in the story, and we are offered insight into the hearts and minds of this character-rich book. However, Trevor remains at the core of this heartwarming story, which asks readers to put aside their cynicism for a moment, and to believe in the possibility of affecting real change by local action. If there is one flaw, it is that this book is written for adults, and is not suitable for teenagers who would surely be inspired by Trevor's remarkable story. Nevertheless, Pay It Forward promises to be the sort of book that will pass from the hands of one eager reader to another, leaving in its trail, a sense of the great power of a small act. |
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