“It gets off to a pretty slow start, the main character does a total 180 about half way through, and the rest of the book is about his kid. It ends on a bit of a downer.”

“There's always a bit of suspense about the particular way in which a given school year will get off to a bad start.”

“From start to finish, this movie is obviously about God. He is the main character. How is is possible that we live as though it is about us?”

“The best morals kids get from any book is just the capacity to empathize with other people, to care about the characters and their feelings. So you don't have to write a preachy book to do that. You just have to make it a fun book with characters they care about, and they will become better people as a result.”

“He was going through one of those moments that you read about in books, when a character reacts in an unexpectedly extreme way to the normal discontents of living.”

“I never thought I could write this much and now that it's coming to an end, I feel sad that I have to stop, sort of the way you feel at the end of a really good book and you know you're going to miss the main character. But in this case, the main character is me! Myself. Joe (formerly JoDan) Bunch. —Joe Bunch”