Nine years ago, YA readers were treated to the antics of Moonkid and his spirited sister in Paul Kropp’s Moonkid and Liberty. Two years have passed in the telescoped world of fiction. Ian “Moonkid” McNaughton has returned, still slight in stature, astronomical in verbal IQ, and as much a social alien as his nickname suggests. On the outs with high school authority, he’s threatened with transfer to “the sweat gland of the armpit of the district.” To escape this possibility, Moonkid must tutor Prometheus, an elementary school boy of enormous proportions who struggles with basic literacy.

Opposites attract powerfully. Moonkid brings a spark to the stuffy 19th-century classics Prometheus is supposed to read. Prometheus thrives on the relevant reading Moonkid offers him; his response journal shows a growing resemblance to English. When Moonkid’s approach to reading alienates Prometheus’s teacher and he is dismissed as a tutor, the two carry on after school. They enhance their mutual learning with a trip to the planetarium and basketball sessions designed to help Moonkid’s spastic co-ordination and poor body image.

The two characters are versions of stereotypes – feeble white nerd from the liberal left meets underachieving black dude from the housing project. Secondary characters, too, often represent a particular social stance – the vice-principal, the gang members, Moonkid’s post-counterculture father. However, the characters seem far more than cardboard props. Both Moonkid and Prometheus shine in their fleshed-out humanity, Prometheus with his perceptions on living, and Moonkid with his self-deprecating wit; his sister Liberty looks at him “as if my brains would fit nicely inside one of her lipstick cases.”

Moonkid and Prometheus abounds in witty figurative language and literary allusion. The writing is light years away from the low vocabulary fare in Tough Stuff, a Series Canada novel by Kropp that Prometheus tackles in an early chapter. This compelling story of teens in transition may send even good readers to a reference book. The wit and sensitivity of this book may also lead a current generation of readers back to the earlier novel featuring Moonkid and his clan.