Quirky story about a goat that lives on a roof, a kid named Kid, a blind skateboarder, a boy afraid of windows, a dog named Cat, and other unique characters. Parts of it definitely seem more like short interconnected stories for adults rather than a children's novel.

The writing was ok and it deals with heavy issues so should be for older kids.

In The Goat a girl named Kid moves into an apartment building near Central Park. She hears a rumor that a goat lives on top of the building, though very few have seen it. Legend says if you see the goat, you will have seven years' good luck. Kid thinks her family needs good luck, so she sets out to see if the goat is real.

"Who is this book for?" I asked myself multiple times while reading The Goat. It's not for me, I knew that much early on, despite the beautiful cover and the perfect size of this little book. I want to own it based on aesthetics alone. But the inside, the actual words, they give me a lot of problems. The book is marketed toward 9- to 11-year-olds, but the book's third-person omniscient POV often focuses on adult characters with adult problems.

The first character we meet, besides the goat, are Jonathan and Doris Fenniford-Lysinski. Jonathan had a stroke, he's depressed, and he's not going to hide his depression. His wife is also depressed, but she tries to hide it behind a sunny demeanor. We also meet blind, skateboarding fantasy novelist Joff Vanderlinden, who has writers block and, one day playing chess in the park, meets a woman who says "buckaroo" and falls in love with her at first non-sight.

Finally, after moving into the building, Kid meets Will, a boy who fell out of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and into this book. His parents died in 9/11 and he now lives with his grandmother. Will likes Spoonerisms which means he switches the lirst fetter of some words. Did I mention that Kid's family is in this apartment building because they're dog-sitting a dog named Cat? That's what passes for comedy in this book.

Now I'm not saying young reads can't or won't appreciate adult themes. It's just that this story isn't told with a young person's voice. The voice is like Jonathan Safran Foer trying to remember what it was like to be a child, yet his memory is fuzzy. As a result, the book falls into this void between young readers and adult fiction.

Void isn't the right word, though, because void implies infinite blackness. No. This book is shallow, which makes it a difficult book to recommend for a reader of any age.

The writing is sometimes inconsistent, like when Kid gets mad at Will and says something like, "Can't you talk normal SOMETIMES so people can understand you?" His Spoonerisms are sporadic, and at least half the time he speaks in perfectly normal English, so that outburst seemed contrived. Also, it's difficult to tell how long the goat has even been there. A week? Years? And if literally only one person in the building has seen the goat, how did Will know about it? Who says you get seven years' good luck? Did he make that up? Did I miss something?

Plus, all the characters are paper-thin with "conflicts," you can call it that, that all resolve on the turn of a dime during the book's zany madcap climax.

Which brings me back to "Who is this book for?" The book's one Amazon review from "margaret m black" says, "This is the BEST chapter book in years. A true hidden gem. My 9 y/o granddaughter was begging for more chapters every night. The real life issues are handled brilliantly. I highly recommend this to all my friends," and little-m margaret gives the book five stars. But margaret can't capitalize her own name, only two people have ever found her reviews helpful, and she gives everything five stars except a pitcher which arrived broken (1 star) and a broken 6" Rotating Ballerina, Nutcracker and Mouse King around Christmas Tree Figurine with Music Box (also 1 star). I don't trust margaret's judgement.

While reading, I concluded the book must appeal to the type of child depicted in the book. One who, insulated by their privilege, has the luxury to wallow in their anxieties. It also would be a book best read aloud by an adult, as the omniscient narrator is written in an adult voice. I guess I agree with margaret on one thing.

Considering all my issues with the book, I do like the way it ends. And for a book that I've criticized as shallow, the ending has a surprising amount of depth to it. All the characters have had anxieties foisted upon them, either by their parents (Kid's parents are their own bundles of privileged anxiety), tragedy, disease, or simply being a goat trapped atop an urban building. Will and Kid attempt to help each other break the anxieties that affect their lives, and by doing so they inadvertently help others do the same. Their quest for the goat gives everyone a sense of stability and peace in the end.

An extra short loosely based mystery novel critically acclaimed with multiple starred reviews that just hit the fan for me. A girl moves with her family to the United States to be home schooled while her mother produces a play in New York City. She begins to befriend a varied cast of characters who live in her building all struggling with their own issues. They all become interconnected during the girl's pursuit to prove whether or not a rumored goat living in the building that gives good luck to be true. I found the writing choppy and the characters shallow in development. I finished the book just for the sake of finishing it not because I was intrigued by the author's writing, the characters, or the plot line. The silver lining was that the goat who took turns narrating the story may have been one of the most intriguing characters.

This is a peculiar little story about a kid named Kid who comes to New York with her family to dog/apartment sit. They learn of a story that there is a goat living on the building and investigate. We also meet other tenants of the building and learn their stories, each interesting in its own way. I listened to this book and will admit that I found it a bit disjointed. While the side chapters about the other tenants were interesting and did explain bits about them, every time one came up I felt like we were leaving the main story on a detour and then coming back to it. It seemed to break the pace of the storytelling a bit too much.

A cast of eccentric characters in a New York apartment building brought together by a quest to find the goat rumored to live on their building. Quiet and charming.

Clearly I was not the target audience for this book. I just didn't get it at all. The main protagonists are all adults; their stories stand front and center. Kid and Will are kind of on the edges of their orbits, never fully developed. They both have a briefly mentioned and briefly exhibited personal issue with which they must deal, Will's being the more serious. They both have a coming-of-age experience, but we really don't know much about them, and so it felt very false to me. We do however, know a lot about Jonathan, Joff, Kenneth, the goat, and even Kid's parents. Why would kids care that much about a bunch of grownups? It felt to me like the whole thing got flipped somehow.

And what's the deal with the goat? Was it an amazing metaphor for something? Or just a quirky thing about Kenneth and his dad? I have no idea, and I don't think many kids will figure it out, too.
The end was not satisfying in the least, although Fleming tried to make it so.

Brilliant!

This was entirely delightful. It felt like one of those French animated films that always lose best animated picture to a Disney movie.