Smackdown Books 2021

Ordinary Hazards
We Dream of Space
If These Wings Could Fly
We Are Not Free
The King of Jam Sandwiches
All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team
The Companion
Punching the Air
Show Me a Sign
Land of the Cranes
Furia
Dragon Hoops
When Stars Are Scattered
Snapdragon
The Radium Girls: The Scary But True Story of the Poison That Made People Glow in the Dark
American as Paneer Pie
Tune It Out
The Gilded Ones
The Left-Handed Booksellers of London
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Sunday, December 8, 2013

Round One ...Counting by 7's is victorious.

Hokey Pokey: A unique allegory about "coming of age" without any real crisis involved.  This book, however, is too silly for the age group it is aimed at.  Likely younger readers will not quite get the full meaning and older students will not have the patience to relax into the seemingly childishness of it all.  Although, we did like the "bikes are horses" concept ( mainly because both of us still call our bikes "our trusty steeds" and sometimes imagine slapping its flanks in order to power up a hill) , the concept is taken too far and likely will be dismissed by the critical adolescent reader.  Jerry Spinelli does try to wrap up the ideas in a nice parcel in the end but it is all a little too late....for us we will take our "right arm out" and instead of "shaking it all about" we will just leave it out.

 

Counting by 7s is our winner and will move to the next round. Although some events seemed contrived in their resolution, the short chapters and changing points of view add to its readability.  The "quirky" main character is delightful and the plot portrays an incident which lives out the greatest identified fear of early adolescents: fear of the death of one or more parent.  We can see junior high students loving the main character's resilience and tenacity as well as her ability to bring out the strengths in others. 
 
Submitted by:  Robin and Maureen (and Maureen's reading buddy - Brenda)

2 comments:

  1. Both Arlene and I have used this book in our grade eight classes to help with writing journals. I love Sloan's writing and am so pleased to see it move on sorry Jerry.

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  2. Page 176 and 177 in particular provided lots of fodder for frames to begin very interesting quick writes.

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