Step on a Crack

The title 'Step on a Crack' refers to the narrator’s OCD behaviours and his “overwhelming fear” of stepping on cracks in the street. We learn that these behaviours began nine months earlier, when Joshua’s twin brother disappeared. Very quickly, the reader is drawn into the mystery and wants to help Joshua and his friends solve it. The engaging dialogue and action-filled plot draws the reader in, and the New Zealand setting is easy to relate to. Even reluctant readers would have difficulty putting it down.

Although there is a slightly supernatural aspect and an evil antagonist, the story is believable because the concerns of the narrator are so typical of a 14 year old boy. His relationships with his peers are more important than those with his parents and his faltering attempts to ask a girl on a date are very sweet and believable.

This book works on many levels. Along with the mystery and adventure at the heart of this, there are many references to historical events: the Erebus disaster, the First and Second World Wars, and the eugenics movement. Issues of identity and belonging are also part of the story. For example, Joshua’s girlfriend, Pipi, who is of Irish and Māori ancestry, feels “too brown to belong to one culture and not brown enough for the other.” There is plenty of material to explore if a teacher wanted to use this as a class text.