Per my review at http://baltimorereads.wordpress.com/2... 
 Meet Arnold Spirit, Jr. - more commonly referred to as "Junior" - a stuttering, lisping, big-footed, large-headed, glasses-wearing fourteen-year-old Spokane Indian who likes to express himself through cartoons. His physical ailments are due to being born with "water on the brain" as Junior likes to say, and the bigger, stronger kids on the reservation aren't afraid to take advantage of his weaknesses. Junior starts to realize just how suffocating life on "the rez" can be, so he takes the advice of one of his teachers and transfers to Reardan High, an all-white school outside the Spokane territory. Upon making this choice, Junior finds himself pulled between two worlds - the world of his people (who now ridicule him for being a traitor) and the world of his new white teachers and classmates (who don't quite know how to react to an Indian stepping foot in their school). 
 It's hard not to love Junior right off the bat. He is both funny and poignant, whether he is expressing himself in words or in the cartoons that are scattered throughout the novel (which are drawn by the talented Ellen Forney). Alexie offers great wisdom through Junior (who is actually based off of Alexie himself) with sentences like "I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats," and "If you let people into your life a bit, they can be pretty damn amazing." In all his writings, Alexie has channeled his life as a Native American; the story of Junior is his chance to really put a bit of himself into a character, and he does it very well. 
 A lot of the humor found throughout Diary connects to the idea that Junior is, in fact, a teenage boy. He is still growing up, and while life on the rez may require him to mature a bit quicker than most boys (he has already been to forty-two funerals), he has his true teenage moments. He falls in love with a beautiful white girl named Penelope, he gets in fights, he occasionally drops an "f-bomb" or two. For these reasons and others, Diary has been protested by some parents and schools as being too inappropriate for young readers. There is apparently too much mention of sex and violence for it to be put on young adult shelves. But I find their worries to be pointless. Junior never says or does anything that any fourteen-year-old boy doesn't already know about. In fact, an adult should be thrilled if their student or child is anything like Junior, who has seen so much despair in his young life already and he is still able to get out of bed every day and hitchhike 22 miles to school. He is a loyal friend to outcasts such as the violent Rowdy and the geek Gordy, he is a self-proclaimed "book kisser," and he is a star-shooter on his school basketball team. Alexie simply created a believable, likeable character that is a great role model for any child willing to step out of their element to better themselves. 
 Through Junior, readers can get a sense of what it is really like to be an Indian living on a reservation. He presents both the hardships and the joys of his background and makes it a point to say that he is not ashamed of his culture. He simply wishes a better life for himself, for his family, and for everyone on the reservation who is stuck within the poverty and alcoholism that have claimed so many lives.