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Archives for January 2015

Unleashed by Gordon Korman Review

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Gordon Korman’s Swindle Series has been going on for quite a long time, and now the seventh book of the series has been released: Unleashed, in which Griffin Bing’s (aka The Man with The Plan) school is going an invention contest, and he’s competing against Darren Vader. There is thievery, breaking into government buildings, and knocking off the power grid for miles around

Summary

When Griffin starts getting congratulatory remarks at school one morning he can’t figure out why. Then he realizes it’s because his school is competing in a statewide invention contest. Because Griffin’s dad is an inventor, everyone figures Griffin is going to ace the contest. The problem: Griffin doesn’t know the first thing about inventing.

His worst nemesis, Darren Vader, however, goads him into the contest, and they even make a bet that whoever wins will write a script that the other will be forced to read to the entire school. Now Griffin really doesn’t want to lose.

When Melissa Dukakis, one of Griffin’s best friends and tech wizard, signs up for the contest for herself, Griffin is not pleased; he was expecting Melissa to help him. She’s about to agree, but then their friend Pitch comes in, fresh off not being allowed on the wrestling team because she’s a girl, and levels an outrageous accusation at Griffin that he’s being discriminatory. Melissa doesn’t know what to do, but now their group has split into two; the boys and the girls.

Savannah is having trouble with Luthor constantly chasing after a delivery truck, so Melissa invents a machine that emits a high-pitched noise whenever Luthor starts chasing that keeps him off the road. Savannah is overjoyed, but that doesn’t last too long when Melissa’s invention disappears.

Not that Griffin’s invention is going along too well, either. He’s trying to invent a silent vacuum cleaner, but for some reason it’s knocks out the electricity everywhere when he turns it on. Finally the team gets back together to help find Melissa’s stolen invention. Melissa is shattered and refuses to talk to anyone anymore.

The gang thinks Vader might have stolen the Hover Handler, as Melissa calls it, but he’s so confident about his own professionally made invention that they realize he’s not even worried that anyone could pose a threat to him. Their next target is their new neighbor, Mr. Hartman; or Heartless, as Griffin has dubbed him. When he moves in he no longer allows the kids to take a shortcut across his property to school, making an extra twenty minutes of work for them. He’s very suspicious of the government, and even worries that the Hover Handler was actually a means of spying on his house.

When they hear the noise of the Hover Handler emitting from Mr. Hartman’s house, they spy on it and eventually are forced to raid it in an attempt to take it back. But when they realize the noise is really coming from a piece of mechanical equipment, they wonder whether Mr. Hartman was right about the government all along: Did Uncle Sam really steal Melissa’s Hover Handler?

Review

Unleashed was good, combining typical Korman action and excitement with awesome plot twists and outrageous characters. The book also showed that the series may be growing a little old and not be as fresh as it once was.

What made the Swindle Series continually good, despite the fact that this is the seventh book, published seven years after the first one, is that Korman has managed to construct an entirely new and exciting plot in every book. I was a little wary about the last book, Jackpot, but Korman managed to keep it new and inject it with an entirely different storyline. The overall theme is not new here, with the plot of the team looking for a stolen item basically taken from Framed, to which the plot bears many similarities.

Griffin becoming an inventor, and his invention succeeding in a way he doesn’t want it to by sucking all the power for itself is hilarious. Many new characters in this book were also very funny, including Mr. Hartman, who has the floor plan of every government building a 100-mile radius, and the U.S. government itself.

The characters are becoming more important in the series, in the past being mostly a backdrop to the plot, and now being interesting and real enough to make an interesting story just on their own. It seems to me that Korman probably didn’t have too much trouble writing this one, since he’s gotten to know the team so well, but there are still tons of jokes and other cool things sprinkled throughout the pages. While the arc of the story may have been somewhat recycled, the characters and the actual details of the plot make up for it easily, Korman clearly giving 100% into making the whole book engaging and funny. We are still seeing new sides and actions from the characters all the time, instead of just recycling the same things, which continues to make the books interesting.

One weird thing is that Victor Phoenix, a big new character in the last book, is simply missing. Korman told me that he didn’t suspect anyone would miss Victor, and that the story isn’t really going in a continuous order. I’ve seen other people raising questions about Victor’s absence, however, and it is kind of shocking to see him simply gone, considering the fact that while Griffin is still the leader, Victor was sitting at lunch with the team through all of the previous book, and it only reasons that he still would.

 I think the storyline works a lot better without Victor (after all, who wants more than one book of a guy whose main characteristic is that he was bullied?), but it would’ve been helpful to give some explanation like that he was on vacation or moved away or something like that. Victor’s disappearing act isn’t really that big of an idea, though, and it doesn’t really impact the strength of the book apart from being a little disappointing.

Overall, I love Unleashed, and any middle grade kid will like it. All the books in this series are pretty much equally good, with the possible exception of Showoff, and though some say that the series is getting old, Korman continually proves them wrong. He has said there is at least one more book, which I’ll be looking forward to. This is the first one that slightly lacked originality, but it’s still a great addition and it’ll be interesting to see other adventures Korman has up his sleeve for the team led by The Man with The Plan.

 

Blue Birds by Caroline Starr Rose Review

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Blue Birds is the second book by Caroline Starr Rose, and I was fortunate enough to have been given a copy of the ARC. Caroline is also the author of May B., a good book that I especially liked for its allusion to “the place where the earth meets the sky.” Both are historical fiction novels, with the first focusing more on the main characters own inner struggle and the second geared towards a girls’ interaction with the world in a very big way.

Summary

Blue Birds is set in Roanoke, starting in 1587. Of course Roanoke is the location of the famous Roanoke Colony, which mysteriously disappeared but not without leaving some strange markings. Throughout the book we follow the adventures of Alis, a girl from Britain who has sailed over to America with her family, and Kimi, an Indian girl.

When Alis gets there with her parents, however, things are not as they planned. They were intending to go and establish the colony of Ralegh in Chesapeake Bay, but their pilot Ferdinando abandons them in Roanoke. The colony has been empty for a long time, and it appears that her beloved Uncle Samuel may be dead. 

Still, they are going to make the best of the situation. Alis’ mom has a baby and Alis starts helping out with taking care not only of him but also of other children. Alis doesn’t fully like this, but at least she has her blue bird that her Uncle Samuel gave her.

She loses it one day, though, running away from the Indian girl, Kimi. Alis soon she becomes curious about the girl, having no one else her own age and gender to hang out with. Although they don’t speak the same language, they still communicate and have a good time together. 

The Indians are suspicious of the English, considering the war that has just happened. Kimi has lost her own dear sister, and Alis is something of a replacement. The English know nothing about the previous conflict, however, only seeing the dead bodies. The leader of a neighboring tribe, Manteo, tries to bring people together, but no one is sure which side he’s on, even though he’s been given authority by the Queen.

Tensions continue to escalate, with the Indians wanting revenge and the English attacking Manteo’s colony, their ally. There are deaths, but Alis and Kimi are able to help warn each other about their groups’ plans so that nothing catastrophic happens. The English eventually are planning to leave, when Alis gets caught with Kimi. She is seen as a traitor, and her dad loses his honor. She apologizes and says she is wrong, but in the end chooses to leave her family and live with Alis and her family.

Review

This book is very historically accurate, verified by a lot of research on the author’s part. I was able to learn a lot about what happened at Roanoke leading up to the disappearance, none of which I knew before. Some of the characters in the book are actual people, so it is based on the historical record except for the ending where the tribe leaves, which is Caroline’s own theory. 

The verse format is nice, and the author does it very well. We hear the characters talking to us and get to know them well, living the story through their eyes. Verse narration is nice because it allows a sensitivity that is not possible in normal first person narration. The only problem is that some of the details of what is going on are a little blurred because the verse references can be kind of ambiguous about them. Following along with everything was easy while I was reading, but later I didn’t remember the details of what happened much, probably somewhat because it was often not stated directly.

What I really liked about the book is the fact that Alis chooses to abandon her family and live with a people whose language she does not speak, solely based on her friendship with Kimi. That is really awesome and it shows a great courageousness which stems from Alis valuing and choosing what is most important to her, in this case a friendship based on a common human bond whereas her own family and village are in all sorts of confusions and do not trust her.

Blue Birds sets up tensions early and there are plenty of mysteries and unanswered questions to keep readers going through the book. It’s very good that even though the theme of the book is clearly friendship, Caroline knows that intrigue is what keeps kids reading. Nevertheless, original action driven by the main characters does not really take place until the very end of the book.

Overall, this is a good book, but I wish more original stuff had happened in addition to the history. The history is interesting to learn about, but the really important part of a book is what the characters themselves choose to do. At the end Alis makes an awesome decision, and she and Kimi help each other out a bit throughout, but there was opportunity for a lot more action and a lot more excitement instead of merely reading about the girls’ reactions to what is happening around them. Just having a couple of fun side plots to keep the story moving would’ve been really helpful.

I think a lot of girls will like this book anyway. I find it difficult to imagine too many boys reading it, even just based on the cover, although some boys would no doubt enjoy the historical side of the book. It is definitely not for kids who do not read a lot, just because of the lack of character action early on. It has many strengths, however, and middle grade girls who read a lot and are at least somewhat into historical fiction will find this a very worthy read.

This post is part of a week-long blog tour for the book Blue Birds. Author Caroline Starr Rose is giving away a downloadable PDF of this nice Blue Birds quote (created by Annie Barnett of Be Small Studios) for anyone who pre-orders the book from January 12-19. Simply click through to order from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books A Million, IndieBound, or Powell’s, then email a copy of your receipt to [email protected] by Monday, January 19. PDFs will be sent out January 20.

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A Very Short Story by Ernest Hemingway Audio and Analysis

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A Very Short Story by Ernest Heminway is just that, a short tale of a man and a woman (Luz) who are madly in love and consider themselves to be married, but whose relationship falls apart in the end after Luz finds another man when her lover is away in America.

The story is very deliberately short to show how even though while it was going on the two “felt as though they were married,” it ended up not turning into anything. Hemingway often wrote about the transiency of romantic relationships, and this is a good example of him reminding that even though they were so close, still within just a few months the romance was over.

He also does not even give us the name of the man, implying that he could be any man, that any man could lose a lover like that. A purely romantic relationship like this one can be tampered off easily, the story shows, and therefore it is presumably best to be aware that attraction to people is not so special as it may seem and can easily be changed and that lasting relationships can be a result of luck, as well as presumably not just a romantic attraction.

On the Run Series by Gordon Korman

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Imagine if one day, in school, your house just happens to be on CNN. And FBI officers just happen to be raiding it, taking your parents away in handcuffs. Imagine if, before you know it, people all across the country are decrying them as the worst traitors imaginable.

That’s what happens to Aiden and Meg Falconer. Aiden (15) and Meg (11) have their world rocked upside down amidst charges that their parents, respected criminologists, helped aid and abet terrorists. Sure, their parents have an alibi that they were working for the CIA, under the guidance of agent Frank Lindenauer. The problem: Frank Lindenauer has disappeared, and the CIA say they never employed an agent by that name.

With their parents stuck in prison for life, Aiden and Meg are thrown on Sunnydale Farm, a prison farm that is run by the Department of Justice. One night a fire sets the place to burn, and Aiden and Meg realize that this is their opportunity to escape; and to prove their parents innocence. But how likely is it going to be, with the whole country, the FBI, and a bald assassin after them?

Book 1: Chasing the Falconers

9780439651363Here we get the backstory, and the fire that engulfs Sunnydale. Aiden didn’t start it on purpose, but he didn’t exactly jump to stop it, either. He hurries and saves Meg, and they take off. They are forced to walk all night, and to steal clothes in order to remain inconspicuous. They travel a great deal, but the cops are after them and they are forced to team up with the manslaughterer, Miguel Reyes, in order to survive.

The Falconers in this book don’t really know what they’re going to do, but they figure that somehow they’re going to do what it takes to save their parents. We are introduced to Aiden as a cautious and practical, and Meg as brilliant and filled with unbelievable spunk, plus the gift of gab. We also meet J. Edgar Giraffe (their nickname for Emmanuel Harris, the massive FBI agent who put the Falconer parents away for life), and have a strange encounter with Hairless Joe, a man who is out to kill them.

Book 2: The Fugitive Factor

ontherun2The series now starts to really pick up, Aiden and Meg trying to track down former associates of their Uncle Frank for leads. In this vein they head to Boston, where they attempt to meet with their Aunt Jane. She doesn’t prove helpful, but Aiden and Meg are able to enjoy themselves in a super luxury hotel thanks to their parents skymiles accounts that hadn’t been shut down.

Unfortunately, Meg gets captured, and Hairless Joe dresses up as a police officer to take her into custody. The book gets its title because they are now very well known as fugitives, making it dangerous for them to venture into public. Still, the Falconers prove resourceful and manage to not only solve a crime going on in their expensive hotel, but more importantly get information on the trail of Frank Lindenauer.

Book 3: Now You See Them, Now You Don’t

200803065BNowYouSeeThemNowYouDon't5DThe third book has Aiden and Meg hot-footing it to LA on the basis of old driving tickets issued to their Uncle Frank. Unfortunately their skymiles accounts have been compromised, so the government is aware of their location and they are forced to hang out with a gang after Aiden saves the life of Bo, a gang leader. Although Meg grows close to the gang members, they are soon off put by the violence and killing that surrounds gang life. Still, Bo manages to come in for them and in a big way, and Aiden saves his life a second time.

In addition, Aiden and Meg learn more about Lindenauer, gaining access to an old locker of his that shows he may have been connected with the terrorist group HORUS. That may prove Lindenauer’s guilt, but that doesn’t mean their parents are out of the woods yet. Aiden and Meg also stumble into a vicious trap threat by Hairless Joe and narrowly escape with their lives.

Book 4: The Stowaway Solution

n175499Aiden and Meg have to get from LA to Denver (where HORUS headquarters used to be located), but they have no cash and the whole city is on the lookout. They solution: Get shipped out by sea.

It proves to not be so easy, though, when they get caught stowing away and are forced to jump overboard during a massive storm. Aiden is badly hurt and captured, and it’s up to Meg to save him with none other than Emmanuel Hairless standing in her way. The next order of business is still to get to Denver unnoticed, where possible salvation for their family awaits.

Book 5: Public Enemies

423-lThis is the best book is the series. Aiden and Meg manage to steal a motorcycle and head unnoticed to Denver, where they are able to pick up some clues about HORUS. While resting in the library Meg is furious about the hatred the famous radio broadcaster Mr. Mouth is spewing at them, and dramatically calls him to set the record straight.

The FBI see them on a surveillance video and are heading over, but unfortunately Hairless Joe is already there, ready to kill them. This time he’s not giving up, and makes several brutal attempts on their life. Only the help of The Mouth and his millions of listeners can save the Falconers from certain capture. Aiden and Meg also learn the real identity of Frank Lindenauer…and Hairless Joe.

Book 6: Hunting the Hunter

n175494Aiden and Meg now realize that the bald assassin after them is Frank Lindenauer, and the only way to exonerate their parents is to force a confession. They lie low out in a farm and try to draw Hairless Frank into a trap, but soon learn that it is not going to be so easy. Desperate, Aiden decides he’s going to sacrifice his own life to save their parents.

Meg is not going to allow that, so she goes to the FBI and turns herself in, arranging for them to show up at the suicide meeting between Aiden and the killer. It doesn’t look like Hairless Frank is going to wait, however, and a dramatic battle ensues with the fate of the Falconer family in the balance.

Review

This series is pure gold. It is by far the best adventure series Korman has done, and is reminiscent of the style of the books he wrote when he was younger. In fact, he himself has on occasion said On the Run is what he’s the most proud of.

This six book series is packed with intense and crazy action that will keep you guessing, on the edge of your seat, and barely able to wait to learn what happens next. I’ve read all six books many times and they’re still just as good as the first time I read them.

Aiden and Meg are very identifiable characters, and I especially like Meg, an eleven year old girl with almost unbelievable tenacity and strength and yet who seems very real. Even Emmanuel Harris and other characters along the way feel both intriguing and quite real-life.

This series is an absolute must, period. It is one of the best kids book series ever written. There is also a second series of three books, Kidnapped, in which Meg is taken and held for ransom. It’s definitely not on the same level, but it’s a very good series nonetheless, and anyone who enjoyed On the Run will be excited to read it.

Get Book 1 of On the Run on Amazon

Get Book 1 of Kidnapped on Amazon

The Battler by Ernest Hemingway Audio and Analysis

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The Battler by Ernest Hemingway was published in the short story collection In Our Time in 1925 and was the fourth story about Nick Adams, a semi-autobiographical character of Hemingway’s.

In The Battler Nick gets tricked by a man into coming close to him, in which case the man knocked him to the ground, even though there was really no logical reason for him to do it. Nick is mad and promises himself he’ll never let himself be taken advantage of it in that way again. When he meets a man along the road he tells him how he’ll attack him and return the favor the next time he gets a chance.

Soon, however, Nick learns that the man is very disfigured, with one ear missing, and discovers that the man is none other than Ad Francis, who was a famous boxing champion at one time. Ad explains how he is crazy, and invites Nick to eat with him and his negro friend Bugs.

They start to eat but Ad gets pretty upset, saying that Nick had no business being there and that is was uncalled for to come in and eat his food. He is about to attack Nick, but the negro manages to knock him unconscious before anything happens. The negro explains how he met Al in jail, and they hit it off, and how he pretends to be crazy even though he isn’t. He tells how Al took too many beatings, and then had his wife divorce him amidst rumors they were brother and sister. Now the ex-wife paid all their expenses so they could just roam around and do as they please.

The obvious message of the story is that Nick was young and wanted to fight, but then he met someone who had fought (not to mention gotten involved in women!) and was now disfigured and in bad shape. Plus it gives the reader a warning against women, since it was a woman who made him crazy in the end.

An interesting thing is that they talk about how completely crazy Al is, although he doesn’t appear to be that crazy. He does get mad at Nick for eating with them after he invited them himself, but only after Nick didn’t lend him his knife at the behest of the negro. Although things escalate quickly, it is not really unreasonable for him to be mad at Nick for not lending him something after Al is sharing his food with him. It’s not that Al is going out of reality, but that he has a lot of aggression and is willing to start a fight and inflict serious violence with only what most people would consider insignificant provocation. His imbalanced aggression is a result of his failure with women.

Don’t Care High by Gordon Korman Review

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Don’t Care High by Gordon Korman is a wickedly good book, written back in 1985 when he was twenty two years old, just fresh out of college, and at around the height of his writing powers. It’s his first foray into Young Adult, but be prepared to be laughing up a storm and thinking about this book for a long time to come.

Summary

The book begins when Paul moves from “the boonies,” as his dad calls it, to the Big Apple. He’s going to school at Don Carey High School, but it’s not like any school he’s gone to before. In fact, the students have dubbed it Don’t Care High School because nobody cares. There is no interest or participation in anything. Students don’t care about having schedule mix-ups like five of the same foreign language class in a day or even having no schedule at all! The sign-up sheets on the walls are from the 1940s, and there are no sports teams or student government or anything like that.

Paul is lucky to meet Sheldon, however, a kid who just might actually care. He only transferred to the school in the middle of the previous year, so he still has a little ambition. For fun, he decides to get a kid named Mike Otis elected as school president, which is easy because no one else is running and the kid won’t even mind.

Unsurprisingly Mike wins, but he doesn’t do anything with his power. That’s up to Sheldon and Paul. Sheldon begins giving Mike credit for all the repairs and other nice things happening at the school, earning him a lot of popularity among students, even though they had nothing to do with it. When the school hears about it and removes Mike from president, though, then they’ve really done it. Mike is their president, and they’re going to do anything he says (or more accurately, anything Sheldon and Paul say he says).

Review

This is a fantastic book. The characters are awesome and real, with funny dialects and nicknames. There’s a kid named Wayne-O whose mission is to see how little he can be at every class and still pass. There’s a hilarious kid named Feldstein who is the locker baron of the school. He owns many of the lockers, and (until Mike Otis’s rise) is the most powerful kid in the school. He can deny you a locker if he wants, and in exchange for a locker you owe him food that you may have to give him at a time in the future of his choosing.

Paul’s family is off the wall, with a crazy aunt, a mother who is always going to take care of her, and a dad who doesn’t see him much until he decides to teach him New York City driving (even though it’s illegal to drive in New York until you’re 18 and Paul is only 16). There is a hilarious radio program led by Flash Food, who relishes talking about the inconveniences of “the greatest city in the world.” There are also insane neighbors who Paul watches and observes but doesn’t understand, a TV character named Steve who inspires him, and risk-taking (but accident avoiding) cabbies.

The best character, though, is Mike Otis. Despite being the most popular kid in school, he doesn’t understand a thing of what is going on. His school records are of buildings, phone numbers, and past addresses that don’t exist. His car is said not to be made by any known manufacture. What is with this guy?

Gordon Korman moved from Canada to New York to attend film school, and the theme of the Big Apple recurs in a few of his books. The theme of a tribute to New York and all its craziness is present throughout the book, right down to the end.

This book has Korman’s classic pairing of two best-friends, one of whom is crazy and adventuresome and the other who is more cautious, but goes along with it anyways. Sheldon is the crazy one, and Paul the more cautious. Sheldon does come up with some really outrageous ideas, and the combination works great in this book.

The only negative thing about this book is that kids who have read a lot of Korman’s books will notice that many other jokes found later in his books were simply copied from this one. Mike Smith, in The 6th Grade Nickname Gang, is Mike Otis with a slight name change and about a thousand times less mysterious and heroic. Schooled also has an election won by someone who is unsuspectingly nominated, and the school in that book is named C Average Middle School instead of Claverage Middle School. There are probably others, but the fact is that many of Korman’s jokes in later books were originally used in his earlier ones, where they are often deeper and even more funny and powerful.

Don’t Care High is a hilarious book that will also make you think. You’ll be laughing up a storm, but you also just won’t forget characters like Feldstein or Mike Otis. Don’t Care High students at the beginning probably wouldn’t have cared about a book written about them, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t!

Get Don’t Care High from Amazon