Many stories have a critical moment where a young child feels it necessary to sneak out of the house or make a secret call or something similar. But there are stories like this one that take this type of thing to another level. Here there is a lot of deceptive behavior throughout and it there is no feel of repentance or even feeling bad. We will give a list of the majority of it here so you can understand. A girl sits at an air vent to eavesdrop on parent’s conversation. Nathan (the main character) has a secret phone and uses it to text another girl in a similar situation as himself. He hides things and often lies to his parents. There is quite a bit of sneaking around in ways that would be very dangerous in real life. Nathan and Victor want to make sure Nathan’s parents don’t hear a conversation so they push chairs in front of his bedroom door to prevent them from coming in. Nathan recalls a long list of sneaky things he has done in the past in the context of getting upset at his cat for always alerting his mom of the deceptive behavior (a good example of no repentance). He justifies dishonesty at one point saying, “It was all true, technically”.
Other things to be aware of:
Nathan describes “easy going” as “immune to annoying people”
We see “OMG” in a text and hear of “eye-rolling”
Several things are ascribed to “luck”
In a moment of intense anger, Nathan envisions hurting his cat
Victor’s grandma, who is intended to be wise, explains that a “mean streak” comes from unhappiness, which isn’t totally wrong, but isn’t the whole story from a Christian perspective.
Nathan describes playing “dumb phone games” as “normal sixth-grade behavior”
Dad tells Nathan that video games were his mom’s “secret addiction”
Young readers will see the very dangerous and misguided statement that Nathan’s mom “had told him her truth… but Nathan’s truth and his parent’s truth might not be the same thing”
The term “idiot” is used
Also misleading, children will see in this one, “Every bird on earth is a descendant of the last dinosaur”
For your awareness, the following references are made: Calvin and Hobbs, comic books (held in a positive light here, despite them being on average very dark today), Star Trek, Harry Potter, Guardians of the Galaxy