Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Almost but not quite.

Always a bummer when books sound good but don't quite fit what I need.

David Klass's Firestorm, the first in the triology, has the same breathless, downhill sort of narrative voice that made You Don't Know Me so compelling to read. Lots of action helped speed along the beginning. However, there was too much sexuality for middle school; it was well handled and not graphic, but just too much information for my students. Also, after a while I just wanted to know what the heck was going on. Why was Jack being chased? This would be a good choice for high school, and the environmental portion is wonderful, but I don't see it being a successful read at this age.

Loved Katherine Hall Page's Club Meds. The idea that a student continuing to come to terms with his disorder and medication would be bullied into giving it up to a student who is dealing Ritalin is great, but there were too many gratuitous f-bombs and a lot of sexuality as well. Again, great for high school.

Conor Kostick's Epic sounded good in the description-- futuristic society where your entire life is predicated on how well you do in a computer game-- but somehow didn't interest me. The students who want books about computer gaming don't have very long attention spans. A better choice would be Rune Michaels' Genesis Alpha.

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