Kathryn Erskine won the National Book Award for her mesmerizing novel Mockingbird. In The Absolute Value of Mike, a young man grows up during an unlikely adventure. Despite his best efforts, Mike has a hard time communicating with his calculus-loving father-and having a math learning disability certainly doesn't help. But when Mike is sent to Pennsylvania to work on an engineering project, the young man learns valuable lessons from the colorful characters he meets.