[Chernowitz! is a] one-issue but lifelike and involving novel about what happens when a sadistic school bully launches a campaign against a Jewish classmate…. Sundback involves the other ninth-grade boys, so that Bobby is ostracized by all of them, and even Brian Denny greets him on the school bus with "Move over, Jew bastard, you take up too much room." This from a former best friend, and the fact that Bobby hasn't one defender, is a little hard to accept—it might be more believable if we knew something about Brian and had a glimpse of Sundback at work on the others. However, Brian's overall behavior—avoiding or taunting Bobby when with the gang, calling him as if nothing had happened when Sundback is out of town—is all too recognizable, and Arrick's general picture of mass adolescent cruelty expressed in anti-Semitism is similarly convincing…. Arrick doesn't provide much insight into the psychology or dynamics of anti-Semitic behavior, but she makes the occurrence seem appallingly possible, and she effectively fastens kids' identification on its victimized but not defeated target.