Looks like a children's heartwarming picture book, but it's really for teens who feel like they can't wait to get out of their backwater villages. The 'poems' read more as narratives; I didn't really hear the young man's Voice. ( )

This poetry book has a few pictures, but really it's quality poetry for young adults. This collection of poems reveals the observations and contemplation of a non-popular, probably typical high school kid working as a soda jerk during his last year in high school in a small town. Serving his customers, he has plenty of opportunity to think about the future, his identity, his goals and dreams (and the probability that he, like almost everyone else in this small town, will never fulfill them), and to make astute observations of all of his customers which he often stereotypes and/or uses as a mirror to reflect on his own values. His experiences and thoughts reminded me so much of my teenage years, and I smiled with nostalgia increasingly as I continued on in the book, happy to have started my day with it. ( )

I would like to read this book,booklist

"The Soda Jerk" is a collection of poems about a boy he gets a job as a soda jerk. The poems can be read seperately, but if you read them in order they actually form a story about this boy's life. The poems talk about numerous things such as working in the soda shop and even town gossip.

This is one of the first books of poems that I have read in a long time. It was nice that they poems actually made a story if you read them all.

In the classroom, I would have the students pick their favorite poem out of the book. I would let them read that particular poem aloud to the class if they wanted to. We could also make coke floats as a snack, since the students of today probably don't even know what a soda jerk does or even what the term soda jerk means. ( )