Reviews to a Gordon Korman book....

[conuly]

0 stars written by an 11-year-old

I was forced to read this book over the summer for school. I started the first chapter and I loved it. Then I continued reading and the book got worse and worse as I went on. The main character, Cameron Boxer, disgusted me. He is a bad influence and is sneaky. In the beginning of the book he almost set his house on fire due to his nonstop video game playing. Then his parents threaten to take his video games away unless Cameron joins an activity, and Cameron starts a fake club. Do you really want to let your children read about such irresponsibility?. Don't waste your time!!!!!!!!!! This book took me months to read because It was so bad I couldn't even stand to read it. I would not let your child read this horrible book. Some great books I would suggest reading are: Out of My Mind, Everything Everything, Running Dream, The War That Saved My Life, The War I Finally Won, and Refugee.

Me: JFC, kid, you are eleven. Lighten up! And maybe stop reading all those Newberys, they're clearly doing something to you.

I feel bad snarking at a kid but... that kid really needs to loosen up a little.

Comments

[nodrog]

The War That Saved My Life was an interesting idea marred by a bad writer.  A girl and her brother in wartime London are evacuated to the countryside and settled with a widow who has horses, and an equestrienne is born.  The author tried, I’ll give her credit, but the result - well, if this won awards, that says something about the awards!

[nocowardsoul]

It almost sounds like an adult pretending to be a kid.

[swingandswirl]

I was just going to say this! It really doesn't sound like a kid, especially the bit about irresponsibility. And the book recs.

[brokenallbroken]

That's my first guess. Second is it was a school assignment.

[conuly]

I love that book, in fact.

[conuly]

Not unless half the kids reviews on the site are the same. Which is absolutely possible, but.

[conuly]

Now that, I believe. Teachers: STOP ASKING KIDS TO DO THIS.

[conuly]

Oh, it does. In particular, it sounds like the sort of kid who has controlling parents and has become something of a brown-nosing suckup in response.

[maplemood]

Me too! On the other hand, this kid totally needs to lay off the Serious Books About Serious Issues for a bit if they can't get into Gordon Korman, of all writers.

[conuly]

YES. They can't think of even one funny book they enjoyed? There is something sad about that.

[nodrog]

Then I shall say no more about it!

[Except to say that I did like the scene where the seemingly perfect upper-class gentleman with all his papers in order - "Officer, his pant cuffs are wet and filled with sand" - was arrested as a spy.  I read a coming-of-age book called Homefront that did the same thing in Florida; the boy and girl found a cache of supplies for Nazi saboteurs buried on the beach, apparently a true story.]

[wendelah1]

You didn't post the snark, right? You just scrolled on by so you could vent to us.

[conuly]

I heroically refrained. Mostly. I did post a more gentle response saying that children don't pick up their values from books.

[wendelah1]

True. They get them from YouTube. Also video games.

[conuly]

*snrk*

[archangelbeth]

Could be a kid who has the "I can't read people screwing up, because the secondhand embarrassment punches me in the gut" issue. A protagonist who screws up and then keeps digging himself in deeper... (I mean, some people can't get through the Miles Proposes During Dinner scene from A Civil Campaign, out of secondhand embarrassment for the horrible mistake he made. I can't get through the ultimate part of that scene on re-reads!)

Throw in some rationalizations that will play well to adults, and ta-da, one is "allowed" to dislike a book because the protagonist screws up (nearly gets the house burned down) and then compounds the screwing up (making a fake club) -- it's "irresponsible" instead of "the protagonist's choices make me feel sick."

But I don't know if any of those other listed have that aspect as well. (Those could easily be sucking up to authority figures, though, yup. >_> )

[mindstalk]

That's the first sentence of the quoted text.

[conuly]

No. That the student was required to read it is the first sentence of the quoted text. There is nothing in there indicating that they were required to review it on Amazon or anywhere else.

[dogstar]

I mean.... I remember writing a book report in elementary school on Barthe DeClements' "The Fourth Grade Wizards" that got REALLY DERAILED about what terrible pets wolves were. :P Ithink your 'has turned into suckup out of selfdefense' theoryis correct.

[dogstar]

(Also I went to look up the summary and OMG THERE ARE SO MANY MORE GORDON KORMAN BOOKS THAN WHEN I WAS A KID (unsurprising as he's you know, kept writing. :P)

[conuly]

Indeed he has.

My opinion, as a fan, is that his writing is objectively better, without that "movie script" quality of the earlier books (and with some room for proper character development), but in the process he lost an essential bit of his, idk, zany humor.

[conuly]

Well, you were right, they ARE terrible pets.

And honestly, kids can be so self-righteous. It's a stage.

[quirkytizzy]

Tweens can be fantastically pretentious. I think they're beginning to practice for the bullheadedness of being a teenager. This review is comedy gold.

[sabotabby]

Nah, this sounds exactly like a kid, probably for a school assignment. They're quite often judgmental at that age and/or writing what they think adults will want to hear.

[brokenallbroken]

I meant writing and posting the review, not the reading the book part.

[silveradept]

I have a feeling this kid has an adult looking over their shoulder while composing the review, and that their unbiased opinion is nowhere to be found in it. Almost like the cold had to read and review the book as punishment for something they might have done.

[author_by_night]

Honestly, I don't think it's a kid. Some of the language makes me think it's an adult pretending to be a kid so they don't look like an uptight Debbie Downer.

ETA: Which isn't to say kids can't be mature, and sometimes very stuffy while sounding mature. Source - some of my old reports and diary entries. :P (Like one where I called an annoying classmate "a perfect pest." I'm sure I got that from a book, but still, I wrote it. So you never know.)

[conuly]

On the off-chance that it is an adult I amend my comment to "take the stick out of your ass already".

[conuly]

That I don't think.

[conuly]

Thankfully we all outgrow being kids. I have carefully blocked out my more interesting little moments from my memory.

[greghousesgf]

and TV!