HUGE

Almost 13-year-old Eugene Huge Smalls—known as Genie by his enemies and family, Huge by his friends—thinks of himself as a hard-boiled detective in the pulp fiction vein. Narrator Jeff Woodman modulates his voice to sound like that of a teenage boy who acts and talks like a tough guy. When Huge’s grandmother hires him to identify the culprit who vandalized a sign at her nursing home, he fires up his attitude. With his sidekick "Thrash," a stuffed turtle, Huge confronts the bad guys. Woodman’s performance never falters, never for a moment sounds like he's a grown-up reading in the voice of an imaginative boy. As Huge tries to solve the mystery, the listener is treated to a quirky coming-of-age story. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2010]