WHEN ZACHARY BEAVER CAME TO TOWN by Kimberly Willis Holt Take the 10-Question Quiz! Take the 30-Question Test! Accelerated Reader: Level: 4.5. Pts. 6. Number of Multiple Choice Questions on Test/Quiz: 10/40. Book Description: Nothing much happens in Antler, Texas, a place too small and boring for 13-year-old Toby Wilson's mom, who has left to try and be a country music star. She used to work at the Bowl-a-Rama Cafe, which sits across the road from the Dairy Maid. It's the summer of 1971. Toby's best friend is Cal, whose older brother is away serving in Vietnam. Then a stranger comes to town. He is Zachary Beaver, a 600-pound teenager, "the fattest man in the world," who never leaves his trailer. At first Toby and Cal come to gape at the freak show with everyone else, but when Zachary's manager disappears, the boys slowly get to know Zachary. They fight off the gawkers. With others in the town, they bring him food. Eventually, they help him step outside--not that Zachary is sweet and grateful. He's a mean liar, rude and angry, as well as achingly vulnerable. They all are. As in her first novel, My Louisiana Sky, a Booklist 1999 Editors' Choice, Holt humanizes the outsider without sentimentality. Through Toby's first-person, present-tense narrative, readers get to know the place in all its flashy particulars and its gentleness. Teens will recognize how people can shut themselves into spaces that are too tight and how even a best friend can be a dork, especially when there's jealousy and failure. Some scenes are unforgettable: when Cal's mother gets the news that her son is dead in Vietnam, when Toby tries to apologize to Cal for not being able to face the funeral and their furious quarrel gives way to tears and laughter. In the tradition of many southern writers, Holt reveals the freak in all of us--and the hope of redemption.