Invisible: A Novel

Bibliographic Information: Hautman, P. (2005). Invisible. New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. ISBN: 0689868006


Plot Summary: Dougie, the main character of Invisible, is a high school boy who everyone at school thinks is a freak. Dougie talks to himself, is a loner, and he stalks a pretty classmate, Melissa Haverman. Dougie's best friend, Andy, is very popular and a football player. Despite the differences between Dougie and Andy they are very close friends. Dougie sees a psychologist and he is supposed to take his medication, but he hasn't. He pretends to take his medications. His medications make him very sleepy and disoriented. Dougie see his psychologist weekly, but he doesn't feel anything is wrong with him so he thinks the sessions are a waste of money.

Dougie spends hours every day building a model railroad and bridge out of matches. At night he "talks" to his best friend Andy. When Dougie is not taking his medications, he starts talking to his best friends. It is revealed later in the novel, after Dougie was beaten up by some boys at school, that Andy was killed in an accidental fire that he and Dougie had set three years ago. At the end of the novel, Dougie is so upset he sets fire to his model railroad and bridge that he had spent so much time constructing. He is a burn victim in a hospital and he thinks that Andy visits him, soon to return. The reader is left with uncertainty whether Dougie died or not. The hospital he was in was named "Madham Burn Unit" which is the same name given to his model railroad and bridge. The reader is left to wonder if he imagined the incident or if he really died.


Critical Evaluation: Invisible is a powerful novel. It gives readers a taste of what it would be like to imagine things and to question the line between sanity and insanity and reality and fantasy. In the novel Dougie is a numerical genius. This leaves the reader to wonder if Dougie's genius also borderlines insanity. Leaving the reader with many mysteries and questions makes Invisible a thought provoking and very interesting novel.

Annotation: Dougie is a loner and a "freak". Dougie's best friend, Andy, is exactly the opposite: popular, good looking and athletic. Three years after Andy's death Dougie is still talking with him as best friends.

About the Author: Pete Hautman was born in 1952 in Berkeley, California. He and and his family moved to St. Louis Park, Minnesota, when Hautman was five. He had four brothers and two sisters. Hautman went to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the University of Minnesota. On his website he says "I left college without graduating, but knowing a little bit about nearly everything, and a great deal about absolutely nothing." Hautman worked side jobs after college: "sign painter, graphic artist, marketing executive, painter cap salesman, pineapple slicer, etc."

Hautman decided to become a writer and his first novel, Godless (2004), won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. He was "deliriously happy" after the award and since has written numerous books. Hautman currently lives with novelist and poet Mary Logue in Golden Valley, Minnesota, and Stockholm, Wisconsin.

Retrieved April 13, 2010 at: http://www.petehautman.com/



Genre: Fiction, Mental Illness, Friendship

Curriculum Ties: Mental Health, Bullying

Talking Points: When Dougie is talking to Andy, is Andy real? Does Dougie really die in the end or is he imagining that he is a part of his town he built with matchsticks?

Reading Level & Interest Age: 13 and up

Challenge Issues: None

Reason for Inclusion: Invisible is a great novel for readers interested in mental health, loners, individuals whom are labeled "different", bullying and the list goes on and on.