No Ordinary Day vs. The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman

I'd like to begin this review by thanking my newly arrived son, Aaron. Admittedly I was struggling to find the time to really get into my first read, The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman, until that wonderful December evening that the 5 lbs. 4 oz little man decide to arrive three weeks early.

Being a new blogger to the illustrious Smackdown and the only bracket to be contested at the selection meeting, I felt a great amount of responsibility with these two works. Initially I believed this would be a easy choice - the story of an orphan girl in India written by an acclaimed author vs a nerdy kid from Pennsylvania - and with that I chose to read Wolitzer's novel first.

The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman  
   This is the story of three young kids from different parts of America all travelling down the Florida for the annual Youth Scrabble Tournament. Each kid (Duncan, April, and Nate) has their own reason for attending the tournament and each one is an interesting character.

   I was surprised with this novel in its somewhat whimsical telling of events and one of the highlights to the novel was that a certain string of events had me thinking back to Fred Savage being chased through Universal Studios in The Wizard. A note to authors out there - if you can get me thinking about such 1989 classics like The Wizard, you're going to do very well in this tournament. Maybe in my next round Sloth will save the day as he rips down the pirate-ship's mast on his way to help Chunk and the gang...I digress. 

   While it is not a 'perfect' story and there were times when I wondered what the purpose of a moment was, overall it was an enjoyable read. Perhaps the strength of the novel stems from the fact that it is not a futuristic post-apocalyptic dystopian vampire-werewolf love story. The heart of The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman is that it is a nerdy tale of the story of three kids and their adventures at a scrabble tournament.

No Ordinary Day
   I had high expectations for No Ordinary Day. Unfortunately, this novel was not able to deliver on those expectations. I believe that Ellis' novel held the underlying goal of exposing just a brutal way of life in Kolkata and the cruel interactions with with others and, unfortunately, more often than not this came off rather contrived. The moments where the novel was successful and genuinely connects with the reader are too few and far between. I found I spent more time as I read reflecting on my increasing enjoyment of Duncan Dorfman than I did engrossed in Valli's tale.

The novel that will advance is The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman. 

If I Grow Up by Todd Strasser VS All Good Children by Catherine Austen Dear Todd: you are not a young black street kid who grew up in the worst kind of humanity possible.As a result, the way you have Deshawn speak and act feels unnatural and it is really obvious that you have no connection to the character. If you can get past that, it is an incredibly sad story of a kid who ends up joining a gang, despite all good intentions and his gramma's love. What I did like was that in the end (spoiler alert) Deshawn did not find the goodness in his heart and run away, go to a respectable college and make good. He needed money for his family, he joined a gang, he sold some drugs, he killed a man. Don;t get me wrong, I like a Strasser book, Give a Boy a Gun was great, but this one feels like Todd is now reaching to hard and to far away from what he knows. All Good Children - Dear Catherine,pick up the pace girlfriend. It took me a good 100 pages to get hooked into this book and to be frank, Katie, normally I would not give a book that much time. That being said,once hooked, I was hooked. The tale of a a not to future society where some of the rules of civility are broken and Max, a high school student, is attending an academic school so he can be succesful. It turns out that even the academic kids can be a pain sometimes so the schools begin a "vaccination program" that changes the kids into zombie-like students. "Yes, ma'am", "We are all here to succeed", etc.. And they don't need parent permission to do it. Will Max be able to fool everyone that he has received the re-education or will he be get the shot? Bonus - Canadians are the seen as the good guys, which we are! Moving on...All Good Children.

Everyday VS Blood Red Road

Okay, so I've enlisted a student helper this year. She's an AVID reader and will give  feedback/comment on each of the choices...hope that's okay! 

Teacher thoughts on Everyday: This is a way cool book. At first I was just totally confused and thought, Okay, just suspend your disbelief and go with it. And then I thought, This is just going to evolve into some weird ultra weird Harlequin romance. And then I finished, and I thought, Wow. Too cool.  

The basic premise of the book is that this kid wakes up every morning in a different body...s/he has no control over how this happens and it has been happening ever since birth (which did leave me wondering how s/he would be able to form viable attachments or relationships in young adulthood), but remember the suspension of disbelief note above...I think the one thing that I was disappointed in was that there was such tremendous potential within the book to develop empathy by understanding how the world looks through others' eyes - and this did happen to some degree, but I think it could have been more pronounced. The protagonist, "A," is so into himself and his girlfriend that we don't hear as much about the kids whose bodies he inhabits. However, overall, I enjoyed it for its uniqueness.

As for Blood Red Road - don't think it's much of a contest. Although it was rather a page turner, I found too many distasteful aspects for me although lovers of The Hunger Games might enjoy it. It's your standard dystopian fantasy with a dash of romance. Basically it would appear as if the world has declined to a state of decay (both environmentally - a drought - and morally - the majority of the population is hooked on some addictive plant and they get their kicks from watching people kill each other in a Christian-in-a-lion-pit sort of way, only human teen v.s. human teen. I was willing to suspend my disbelief while reading Everyday on the basis that it was an original premise, but in Blood Red Road, I wasn't able to believe that a nasty (as in really, really, really nasty) bad guy wouldn't pull the trigger on the gun he has held to a child's head when he sees that the "gig's up" or that one wouldn't check to make sure aforementioned nasty was dead after he'd been hit so that he wouldn't keep popping up and offing others in your party. Plus, as an English teacher, I can handle dialect when it's done well, but I found the feigned dumbed-down dialect in Blood Red Road just plain annoyin' so's I cain't recommen' this here un to go on no how.

The Year of the Beasts vs. The Big Crunch

The Year of the Beasts combines graphic novel and prose to tell the story of sibling rivalry and jealousy between Tessa and Lulu.  The sisters were close until they both got a crush on the same boy.  Their adventures with friends and family make up the bulk of the story. The prose part of the story moves forward, while the graphic novel seems to move backwards in time.  Upon finishing the book one might feel the need to re-read the beginning of the graphic novel and say 'ah, I get it...'

The Big Crunch is a story of boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, and Spoiler Alert * boy and girl end up together.  If you don't want to read this book, just look at the cover - it tells the whole story.  While it was a decent, light, moderately entertaining read, it was nothing special.  There are certainly girls we would recommend it to at the high school level.
*strange note - the fly leaf lists the names of the characters as Jen and Wes, when they are actually June and Wes.

Even though The Year of the Beasts was somewhat confusing, we couldn't put it down.  It was intriguing and  captivating and we couldn't stop reading. We're sending it through to the next round.
Barb and Mona

Sparrow Road vs between shades of gray

As a first time blogger, I enter the blogging world cautiously (as I reviewed previous blogs there seemed to be much poetry and I generally don't write poetry).

Sparrow Road: Clever, funny with underlying sadness and curiosity.  Hope and forgiveness are at the heart of this book.  A lovely read that I think many would enjoy (especially on a hot summer day with a slurpee in hand).

between shades of gray: Poignant, heart wrenching and powerful.  This book kicks you in the stomach several times as it reveals the injustices of the deportation of thousands of Lithuanian's to Russia during and following WWII.  Human rights and strength of spirit ensure you finish this book to the end.


Winner for me:  between shades of gray!!


Maureen

The Smack is Back!

The books wait for no man or woman so it is time to get back on the reading wagon. The 3rd edition of Smackdown has begun. Eager Smackdownians met last night at A Blair McPherson school and received their bracket reads. The PDF of our tournament is available to check up on on the right hand side under our bookshelf. All that remains is the reading, the blogging and the bloodshed....but none on the books please! Round One deadline is December 17th. Good luck to all the contenders....even Arlene's!

That's All Folks....or is it?

Year two was a much more lean, not really mean fighting machine! We made most of our blog deadlines and were able to a pick a winner - A MONSTER CALLS without having to bully too many people. We lost one of our bloggers to a backyard fire and his bone breaking work to stop it - only you Brad! We had people change job, drop in and drop out but overall of this we came together (cue the beautiful harp music) as a community of readers.

Arlene and I thank all of our bloggers for joining in and we hope to see you back again - please don't stop being a voice for young adult literature in education. We thank our readers (unless that is all Arlene hitting refresh in which case....thanks Arlene!) and welcome your comments.

Will there be a SMACKDOWN the triplet edition..............of course! Look for the SMACK to fly again in the fall. Interested?  Contact either Arlene or myself:  arlene.lipkewich@epsb.ca or dia.macbeth@epsb.ca.