Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Foer, Jonathan. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

Nine-year old Oskar is grieving the loss of his father, one of the victims of the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center.  When Oskar stumbles upon an old vase in his father's closet, he finds a key and a clue that leads him on adventures throughout the city as he searches for meaning and healing.

This book is filled with many "normal" pages of text, but in similar fashion to The Invention of Hugo Cabret, there are several sections of pages with illustrations or very few words on the page.  This aspect of the book is intriguing.

I enjoyed this story.  Watching the grief process from the view of a nine-year old was quite interesting.  His adventures throughout New York were also intriguing, as it seems Oskar learned more from these adventures than he would have if he had been in school the entire time.  However, there are more than a handful of objectionable scenes in this book, so I cannot whole-heartedly recommend this book.