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May B. by Caroline Starr Rose Review

November 23, 2014 by Daniel Johnston 1 Comment

May B. is the first book by Caroline Starr Rose, an author who has been attempting to get published for years. It is written in a unique verse told in the first person by May B., a girl living in Nebraska during the 1888 blizzard in which thousands died, though the time is never actually specified in the book.

Summary

May B. has dyslexia, and she wants to learn to read but she simply can’t. She is smart at other things, but words keep tricking her, and eventually her parents take her out of school and send her off to work as a maid for Mr. and Mrs. Obligner, who were just recently married. Mrs. Obligner doesn’t like the dirty countryside so much, and tensions between the two are high. May B. tries to help, but there’s nothing she can do. She keeps trying to learn to read, but Mrs. Obligner always makes her stop if she catches her.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Obligner eventually decides to go back to her family, and Mr. Obligner abandons the house, leaving May B. in it. She has a chance to escape and to go back to her family (it’s fifteen miles back home), but is too afraid, especially after she hurts her ankle and learns that there is a wolf sneaking about. So she lives there alone, without much food, and waits for her Pa to come and pick her up for Christmas. There is a huge snowstorm, and May can barely even get out of the house even if she wanted to. How will she make it home alive in the middle of a massive storm?

Book trailer for May B.

Review

This book does a good job of blending together historical, emotional, and adventure parts of the story. No date or much description of setting is given, yet we can pretty much tell. May’s dyslexia is mentioned, but there is not any dwelling on it nor any resolution; nor is it ever identified as dyslexia in the book. And all of this is mixed in with May being away from her family and having to survive on her own for months.

My general rule with kids books is that if a kid would never have thought to write it, then it’s not a good book. May’s dyslexia is certainly not something most kids would write about, but Miss Rose was a teacher in the past and dedicated the book to students who she felt that she could’ve done better with, so it is quite understandable that she would write about a girl with learning problems. Nevertheless, I think it detracts from the story as a read for kids.

The verse style is also very interesting. It gives the novel an austere feel, leaves a lot to the imagination, and confines the book clearly to May’s experience. Although I think it is something adults will appreciate more than kids, it does also leave the room open to more action and worries because we only see May’s view of the world.

I really like the idea of finding the place where the earth meets the sky, something referred to time after time throughout the book as something May and her brother are trying to find. They’ve even made a bet about who will find it first. Clearly May B. knows children well to write about a concept like that, and what is even more cool is what it represents: A world of beauty and peace, the way the world should be. What is most endearing is that even though May and her brother haven’t found it yet, they have absolutely no doubt that they will.

In the end, this book is well-written, with an excellent look inside the character’s mind and interesting action and ideas. On the other hand, it is hard for me to recommend this book because it does have some things that will make it less appealing to kids. The dyslexia part is probably the biggest thing; if that was replaced with something more exciting to kids this book would be a real winner. It is really a book that adults will appreciate more than children will, as a lot of the beauty of the simple verse style will not be understood by kids; they’ll just know something impressive is going on.

Nevertheless, the story definitely keeps itself moving, and anyone will be excited to see how it turns out. So I recommend it for middle grade girls who are already serious readers. There is no doubt that Miss Rose is a very good writer and I’m excited to see what her next works are like. Blue Birds is coming out at the beginning of next year, and expect a review in January.

Beware the Fish! (MacDonald Hall Series) by Gordon Korman Review

November 23, 2014 by Daniel Johnston Leave a Comment

Beware the Fish! by Gordon Korman is without a doubt the funniest book I have ever read in my life. This book is incredibly good, especially considering it was published when Korman was just 17 years old.

It is the third book in the MacDonald Hall series, but they need not be read in order to understand them fully. The story takes place at the Canadian Boarding School, MacDonald Hall, and centers on Bruno and Boots, two roommates who are always stirring up excitement.

Summary

At the beginning of this book, weird things are happening at MacDonald Hall; they’re having to eat cheaper food, and Bruno and Boots have to move into a new room (with eccentric genius Elmer Drisdale) because one of the school dormitories’ is closing. The school is running out of money, and fast.

Bruno is of course not going to let the school go down without a fight. He starts trying to come up with crazy ways to save the school. They fAdd Newigure that if they can do something spectacular, then the school will get publicity and be resurrected.

Conspiring with the girls across the street at Miss Scrimmage’s Finishing School for Young Ladies (especially the crazy Cathy and roommate Diane), Bruno sets a number of absurd plans in motion. The school tries to collect 40,000 pop cans to build the biggest popcan pyramid in the world. They also try to cash in on many of Elmer’s inventions, including a remote controlled aircraft and a cure for the common cold.

Unfortunately, they are also being tailed my Miss Scrimmage, the headmistress of the girls’ school. She has a shotgun, and Bruno and Boots are constantly running from her when she discovers them “terrorizing” her girls. Although Mr. Sturgeon, the boys strict headmaster who has earned the nickname The Fish for his fishy glare, knows about what Bruno and Boots are doing, he is so mad at Miss Scrimmage for her antics that he falls for their lies to turn against her.

During this time, Bruno is broadcasting on a TV that Elmer has invented, using a fish in the background for his picture and saying inane things such as, “The Fish could descend at any time! Beware the fish!” Even though Bruno believes that what he is saying is only being broadcasted on his little screen, in fact it is disturbing television and appearing on screens all across the county! The police decide to investigate, and send out Agent Featherstone, who believes that The Fish is a dangerous terrorist, and goes to great lengths to stop his Fish Patrol missions.

At the end, everything eventually converges into a literal explosion. Will Bruno and Boots save the school? And if so, how?

Review

This book is so funny, I find myself in laughing fits every time I read it. Agent Featherstone’s investigation and the ultimate police presence at MacDonald Hall is just hilarious. All the characters in this book are vibrant and fresh, and I always feel really happy after reading this book.

I’d say it’s best for kids (especially boys) from the age range 7-13. The only thing you have to be careful about is to get a good edition. I have an original 1980’s copy, and you can find many of them for cheap on Amazon, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find one that is still in good shape now that the book is out of print.

Gordon Korman is one of my favorite authors, and this is definitely my favorite book of his. Trying reading this book without collapsing into laughter. I dare you.

Go Jump in the Pool! by Gordon Korman (MacDonald Hall)

November 23, 2014 by Daniel Johnston Leave a Comment

Go Jump in the Pool! is the second book in the MacDonald Hall series, started by Gordon Korman when he was just twelve years old. This book was published when Korman was just 16 years old, and is one of the funniest he has ever written!

Summary

At the beginning of the book, the MacDonald Hall swim team gets destroyed by their rivals from York Academy because MacDonald Hall doesn’t have a pool. Although Bruno and Boots (the main characters) are able to get back at the “turkeys,” trouble is starting mount. Although MacDonald Hall is the number one academic school, some parents are thinking of switching their kids over to York Academy; including Boots!

Of course Bruno isn’t going to have any of that. He immediately sets about trying to get a pool for their school. The only problem: It costs $25,000.

That doesn’t deter Bruno, though. He’s not about to let his best friends become turkeys. He sets out to raise the money, enlisting the help of their friends Cathy and Diane from Miss Scrimmage’s Finishing School for Young Ladies, which is across the road. Bruno comes out with ideas such as having a bake sale, a talent show, and trying to set a world record. However, $25,000 is hard to come by.

Review

This book is hilarious all the way throughout. Bruno and Cathy are awesome characters, and there is no telling what they are going to do next. Go Jump in the Pool! shows boys and girls of incredible determination and spirit trying to save themselves and their friends.

This book, like many of Korman’s (especially his early ones), is not exactly realistic; it is instead quite rollicking and crazy, but this is exactly the point. There is not one event in the book that you could call impossible; all of them could happen, it’s just that the likelihood is about a million to one. There aren’t a lot of books like that which tell stories that are quite unlikely and yet you believe they could be real.

Although $25,000 is a lot today, it’s interesting to think what it would have been in 1979 when this book was written. $25,000 back then would be worth $82,000 today, a pretty incredible sum.

Reading the first book is a good starter to this one, but the truth is that not reading it won’t hurt your enjoyment of this story at all. Nevertheless, once you read of these books you’ll definitely want to read all of them! They’re that good.

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher Review

October 1, 2014 by Daniel Johnston Leave a Comment

I’m always (usually :)) open to book recommendations, so when my cousin recommended to me the book Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher I thought I might as well give it a shot.

Summary

This was a famous book several years ago when it came out in 2007, and I can see why. It’s young adult and deals with a lot of complicated themes, such as alcohol, rape, and most majorly suicide.

This book does some things cleverly well, especially in writing style. The story is centered around a girl named Hannah who committed suicide. A boy named Clay gets a package one day, and it turns out they are thirteen tapes detailing thirteen different people and the ways in which they made her commit suicide (except Clay, who she says is ok). Clay represents the model of how the author wants us to be, although is character is a little bit artificial.

Throughout the book, we follow Clay around as he visits the spots Hannah talks about, reliving her life since she moved to the town. The author does a very good job recreating those emotions and stories, and there is a lot to be learned from this style of writing.

Note: Here is my video review.

Basically, the gist of the story is that Hannah moved into town a new girl, but very soon gets labeled all kinds of bad things. There are rumors swirling around about her that she had sex with a boy, when all she did is kiss him. Following this, a whole series of bad things happen that eventually leads her into deeper and deeper despair and eventually she decides to leave the world. The thirteen reasons why are the thirteen people who she says made her kill herself.

Basically, the whole point of the book is that if people had reached out to Hannah more and helped her, then she may have not killed herself. So we should all go out of our way to be nicer and not label people like Hannah was.

Negatives

However, there are also a lot of negative things about this book, and to me they outweigh the positives.

First, this whole book consists of people acting extremely wildly. There is a rapist and people who are allowing his actions. People are breaking each others windows, drinking a ton, spreading crazy lies. One boy even takes notes out of Hannah’s “good wishes” box or whatever it’s called just to get back at her. I don’t know if I’m naive, but that kind of stuff simply doesn’t happen. Not once have I ever witnessed people in real life acting so outrageously as in this book.

A more apt title for this book may be, “Thirteen reasons why not to act like animals.” This outlandish behavior makes the book very unrealistic and greatly reduces the power of its message. If it was able to show Hannah being effected by more common behavior that we might actually do, then it would make sense. It may actually be inspiring to try and view how you’re treating other people. But it’s not helpful to tell us to not act like a rapist.

Although we get in touch with Hannah’s emotions a lot, we never really can fully see the connection between those and suicide. The implicit connection is that feeling so alone and mistreated was what made her kill herself, but we never really get to so that. This is really not a book about suicide. The suicide is used as more of an attention-getter to get us to pay attention to what was causing Hannah pain. The main problem is seen as twofold: That she never asked for help, and that good people didn’t try hard enough to give her help.

The book also doesn’t hide the fact, however, that Hannah brought a lot of this on herself. She let herself be treated poorly, be cast as a person she’s not, and at the end of the book even lets somebody have sex with her who she absolutely doesn’t want to. The real problem is Hannah and everyone around her acting very stupidly.

Do I Recommend this Book?

This book is a crazy mess of all kinds of complicated themes that leaves us with no clear idea what is going on, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The message at the end of the book is to reach out and be nice to people because you don’t know what they’re going through, but this doesn’t really tie into the rest of the story super well. Also, it’s unrealistic because nobody is going to walk around trying to help people with their problems. It is good to be a nice person, but that isn’t going to save Hannah.

Thirteen Reasons Why does do a very good job of encouraging readers to look beyond what they normally thought of people as, and instead give them a fresh chance. In this book a gross misunderstanding of Hannah contributed to her misery and eventual suicide. This one of the things the book does best and it does a very good job driving this point home.

This book has vastly positive reviews, but I believe that is mainly because it deals with such emotional topics. Not many people have ventured to write a young adult book about things like suicide, and the author must be commended for trying. But I think a lot of people like the book just because it brings up deep topics that they haven’t really thought about or understood too much. The fact that there are many flaws in the way Asher deals with the subject matter is lost to them. They may be overwhelmed with the way the book throws the whole kitchen sink at them, or they think that any book that brings up emotional topics has to be a good one. I bet if my cousin were to read this book again, now that she’s older and more sophisticated, she wouldn’t be so impressed by it.

So in the end, there are many positives and also many negatives for this book. It is worth reading simply because it is written very well and the author manages to conjure up tremendous imagery that makes you feel like you are right in the story. Still, there are many flaws in the story that make it fall far short of the impactful book it could have been. I wouldn’t give it to anyone younger than 14, and would probably recommend waiting until 15 or 16 so they don’t get completely blown over by the book. In any case, it’s definitely one that will you get thinking.

Everest by Gordon Korman Review

May 14, 2014 by Daniel Johnston 7 Comments

Gordon Korman has written so many good books that it’s always been hard for me to decide which one is my favorite. Sometimes I’d think it was Swindle, sometimes MacDonald Hall, and other times Everest.

Korman did three action trilogies (each book is about 150 pages, so they’re quick reads): Island, Dive, and Everest. In Island, a group of kids gets stuck on an island. In Dive, kids discover a conspiracy going on with an underground treasure. And in Everest, several kids try to peak Mount Everest. It is one of my favorite action works by Korman, and a gut-wrenching, exciting read.

Summary

The first book is called The Contest. That’s because a team of four kids are setting off to try to summit the highest peak in the world. They start out with a bunch of interesting kids, but in the end only four can remain.

Originally the plan was to take some of the more experienced climbers, along with Ethan Zaph, a sixteen year-old who is the youngest ever to peak Everest. However, Ethan joins another climbing team and they decide to take a risk and go with some younger people.

The main character of the story is thirteen year-old Dominic. Even though he’s small and his brother (not him) is renowned as a world-class climber, he is chosen to be a member of the four because of his inventiveness and hard work.

Tilt is another one of the four. Unfortunately, Tilt is very self-centered and a bully. It costs him later as he pays a very high price. Samantha is a fearless climber, and Perry’s uncle is rich and paying for the whole expedition. Cap is their expedition leader and naturally pushes the group very hard.

The second book is called The Climb. In this book we cover the challenges of getting from to base-camp, adjusting to the altitude, and all of that exciting stuff. Unfortunately, Dominic gets altitude sickness and very nearly misses the expedition.

There are also starting to be rivalries within the group, as Tilt is causing all sorts of problems. We learn that Perry doesn’t even actually want to climb, and much more.

Finally in The Summit, we get to see the teens make a push for the peak. This is by far the best book in the trilogy. It’s hard to say because so much happens, but basically there’s a small window they have where the weather is good enough to go for it…unfortunately, there’s a massive storm.

Things get crazy as Dominic and Tilt use their willpower to try to get to the top against all possible odds; including the government. Who will become the youngest person to summit Everest?

The very beginning of the series was a funeral. One of the climbers is going to die on Everest. There is only one question: Who?

Review

Like I said, Everest is great. Korman obviously put a lot of effort into writing this one, and it shines through loud and clear. The character development is not as good as in some of Korman’s other books, but combined with the intense action their adventures really hit hard.

Although Korman uses a lot of descriptive terminology about the climb, and though he explains a lot of the technical stuff, we really never get a very good picture of what climbing Everest would really be like. That’s okay though; it’s not the purpose of the book. I’d guess it would be pretty hard to get a good grasp on it without being an experienced climber yourself.

I would for sure recommend reading this book because the action and suspense is great, and the writing is just spectacular. It leads us into a new and exciting world up on the mountains the we can dream of, escape to, and feel with. Everest reaches the highest summit for boys aged nine to thirteen.

The Last Shot by John Feinstein Review

May 5, 2014 by Daniel Johnston Leave a Comment

Everyone loves mysteries. Everyone loves sports books. What about a book that combines both?

The Last Shot is the first in a series of sports thrillers written by John Feinstein. His writing is awesome and the books are entertaining and instructive about sports while also providing a lot of suspense and action.

Summary

At the beginning of the book we meet 14 year-old Stevie, a big fan of NCAA basketball. For him the pros are a waste of time; college basketball is what is really exciting.

He enters an essay contest for the Final Four and wins first prize! That means he and fourteen year old girl, Susan Carol, will be traveling out to cover the games!

The two are taken under the wings of reporters Bobby Khelleher and Tamara Mearns, who are very interesting characters. Even though Stevie is from the east and Susan Carol is from the south, they are eventually able to get along pretty well. The biggest problem is that Susan Carol likes Coach K, Duke’s legendary coach, while Stevie most certainly does not.

Although no one expects them to break any big stories or do any really serious reporting, Stevie and Susan Carol manage to stumble upon a huge scandal: Star player Chip Graber being blackmailed to throw the championship game against Duke.

The two know they need to do something…but what? Will Stevie and Susan Carol somehow manage to be resource and stop the bad guys, or will Chip be forced to throw the game?

Review

This is a great book that preludes many to come. This is only the first of six books in a variety of sports, each with just as many plot twists as another.

All of the characters in the book are so real I almost feel like they could come to real life. They all have their own endearing quirks, habits, and thoughts that keeps you laughing and wanting to read more.

Although I didn’t know much about basketball (and even less about college) when I first read this, Feinstein does a great job of making it exciting and explaining it in a way anyone can understand.

Boys with inclinations to sports will definitely love this book. It’s told third person limited from the perspective of Stevie, so girls probably won’t be able to identify as well.

The book also tells us a lot about journalism, and does this also in a very interesting way that makes us want to read. Even if it’s not your world, you’ll be wanting to learn more and more about it!

In addition, The Last Shot speaks to a common fantasy kids have; being a reporter at a national sporting event. There aren’t a lot of kids that don’t dream about that.

I’d recommend The Last Shot for boys around fifth to seventh grade. It’s not complex writing at all, but will keep you on your edge of your seat the whole time. The Last Shot is a definite slam dunk.

Click here to get The Last Shot by John Feinstein

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