"My name is Chris Chandler and I'm an investigative reporter. Or at least I was. Until I found out that actions have consequences, and not everything is under my control. Until I found out that I couldn't change the world at all, but a seemingly ordinary 12-year-old boy could change the world completely for the better, and forever working with nothing but his own altruism, one good idea, and a couple of years. And a big sacrifice."
Chris says that someday he'll have kids of his own and they will ask him what part he played in the movement that changed the world. He'll tell them, "My part was nothing. I did nothing. I was just the guy in the corner taking notes."
The movement started with a middle-school teacher's assignment out in Atascadero, California. An assignment the teacher has given hundreds of times before with no particular results. But this time, in the hands of one 12-year-old boy, the assignment took root and grew beyond the teacher's wildest dreams. Now, nothing in the world will ever be the same. Nor would anybody want it to be.
Trevor McKinney is the young student and protagonist of this sometimes sentimental story. Trevor is a boy who didn't seem all that remarkable on the outside, but had a magical spark in him unlike anything his teacher had ever experienced. Trevor and his mother Arlene live alone. That's a "sometimes" too. Arlene tries to be a good mother but fails, she thinks, more than she succeeds.
Reuben St. Clair is the teacher. He's a Vietnam veteran with a disfigured face. A face few can look at without a shudder. Reuben knows and expects this reaction, but he's learned to live with it, and to explain his injury when forced. As you come to know Reuben, your respect for the man grows. His personal story is heart touching, but doesn't prepare you for all that comes next.
Not much in this life can render Arlene McKinney 100 percent card-carrying speechless, but Reuben St. Clair did. ". . . she had never seen a man with only half a face." When she finally finds her voice she introduces herself as Trevor's mother and demands to know exactly what Reuben's assignment was.
Reuben went to the blackboard and wrote in block letters, "THINK OF AN IDEA FOR WORLD CHANGE, AND PUT IT INTO ACTION."
Arlene had a lot of questions not the least of which was, "What does 'Pay it forward,' mean?" Reuben didn't know. He suggested she ask her son Trevor the meaning.
This novel, written from alternating perspectives, is tender yet powerful. It has the same feelings as the movie "It's a Wonderful Life." Some will call it sentimental claptrap. If so, then they'll have missed a tremendous lesson in human nature. The many well-drawn characters in the story enrich it and bring out nuances we too often take for granted, and a few we may have overlooked. Hyde's dialogue, style, and voice throughout the novel are pure and have a quality that says, "Trust me, this is possible, it could really happen." Disbelief is suspended.
For readers' information, the novel's inspiring leitmotif that selfless, good deeds can change the world is already creating an industry buzz in Hollywood. Kevin Spacey and Haley Joel Osment ("The Sixth Sense") have signed up for the Bel Air/Warner Brothers film adaptation, which begins principal photography this spring.
This novel intrigued me because it is not politically correct, because its main characters were not prejudiced against those different from themselves. Race, creeds, looks, were not important. How unusual to have a book that stresses man's humanity to man rather than his inhumanity. It's all here in Trevor's simple little plan to change the world. A plan so innocent that he's almost embarrassed to reveal it's secret to his teacher or his mother.
Read "Pay it Forward," you'll cry, but they'll be good tears, cleansing tears, and right behind them will come a smile.
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(Jones is a published writer & literary critic)
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