Mod 14: Hard Hit Review

What's It All About?

Ann Turner puts Mark's physical and emotional journey in verse in this heart-wrenching story.
Mark thought living up to his baseball coach's standards was tough and that his dad was always pushing him a bit too hard. His friends Eddie and Diane help take the tension off but even they can't help when his world turns upside down. His dad is diagnosed with cancer and he has to struggle to learn how to cope with this devastating diagnosis. 

What'd I Think?

Turner expertly got the emotional point across in this minimal word, verse novel. I wept many times throughout as I read of the ups and downs of living after the diagnosis.

I give it 3 out of 5 stars!

What'd They Think?

School Library Journal

(February 01, 2006; 9780439296809)

Gr 8 Up-As in Learning to Swim (Scholastic, 2000), Turner addresses an intense subject in lyrical poetry. Mike, 16, has the perfect life-star baseball player, cute girlfriend, and loyal best friend-until the phone call that turns his life upside down. His father has pancreatic cancer. While his friends continue to live their lives, time stands still for Mike. His dad suffers through and begins the wasting away that cancer causes. A short period of remission brings a brief period of celebration. In the end, however, Mike finds that his bargains with God and his attempts to get along better with his sister are all for naught. His father dies and he must find a way to go on with his life. Teens who have experienced serious illness and/or death in their family or with close friends will relate to Turner's profound novel that traces the journey of one young man through the stages of grief and recovery. National help lines, addresses, and Web sites are included for readers who need them.-Kathryn Childs, Morris Mid/High School, OK (c) Copyright 2010.

Booklist

(February 01, 2006; 9780439296809)

Gr. 7-10. Tenth-grader Mark Warren is a golden boy: good friends, a gorgeous girlfriend, and an awesome pitching arm, an arm that his dad has cultivated since Mark was small. Yet all turns gray and meaningless when Mark learns that his father has pancreatic cancer. In a carefully crafted, free-verse narrative, the teen tells of his struggle with faith, hope, and disillusionment as his family watches his father slip away--and the inevitable terror and guilt of those still living. It's a hard, sad, beautifully written book, spare yet with surprisingly well-developed characters. Unlike longer, more complex novels that build layers of emotion through description and events, Turner employs poetry to paint the reality of gradual loss, and the language conveys the absence of all the family has known and its emptiness without its central figure. A short bibliography of resources for children whose parents have died rounds out this special book. --Frances Bradburn Copyright 2006 Booklist

What Do I Do With It?

Students will write a one week journal in verse about their lives.

Mod 5: Going Bovine Review

What's It All About?

In Going Bovine, we are introduced to Cameron who describes his best day ever as the day he was 5 and almost died at the It’s a Small World ride at Disney. He is just trying to make it through high school as the “lesser twin.” His sister is part of the cool kids and concerned with her grades while Cameron doesn't see the point in trying so hard. Then he receives a diagnosis of Mad Cow Disease. In order to find the cure, he sets off on an adventure with a host of wacky characters looking for random signs and a mysterious time traveling Doctor X.

What'd I Think?

Damn you, Libba Bray! You hit me right in the feels every time. This book is a twisting and turning quixote-like journey that kept me asking what was real and what was fake, and whether or not Cameron would make it through. With his sidekick, Gonzo, by his side surely, he can't fail! 

I give it 5 out of 5 stars!

What'd They Think?

Publishers Weekly -

(August 03, 2009; 9780385733977)

Cameron Smith, 16, is slumming through high school; overshadowed by a sister "pre-majoring in perfection," while working (ineptly) at the Buddha Burger. Then something happens to make him the focus of his family's attention: he contracts mad cow disease. What takes place after he is hospitalized is either that a gorgeous angel persuades him to search for a cure that will also save the world, or that he has a vivid hallucination brought on by the disease. Either way, what readers have is an absurdist comedy in which Cameron, Gonzo (a neurotic dwarf) and Balder (a Norse god cursed to appear as a yard gnome) go on a quixotic road trip during which they learn about string theory, wormholes and true love en route to Disney World. Bray's surreal humor may surprise fans of her historical fantasies about Gemma Doyle, as she trains her satirical eye on modern education, American materialism and religious cults (the smoothie-drinking members of the Church of Everlasting Satisfaction and Snack 'N' Bowl). Offer this to fans of Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy seeking more inspired lunacy. Ages 14-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist -

(August 01, 2009; 9780385904117)

*Starred Review* In a giant departure from her Gemma Doyle historical fiction trilogy, Bray's latest offering is an unforgettable, nearly indefinable fantasy adventure, as immense and sprawling as Cervantes' Don Quixote, on which it's based. Here the hero is Cameron, a 16-year-old C-plus-average slacker who likens himself to driftwood, but he suddenly becomes the center of attention after he is diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human variant of mad cow disease. In the hospital, he meets Dulcie, an alluring angel clad in fishnet stockings and combat boots, who presents him with a heroic quest to rescue the planet from an otherworldly, evil force. Guided by random signs and accompanied by a teen dwarf named Gonzo, Cameron sets off on a wild road trip across the U.S. to save the world, and perhaps his own life. Talking yard gnomes, quantum physics, cults of happiness, mythology, religion, time travel, the blues, Disney World, the vacuous machine behind reality TV shows, and spring break's beer-and-bikini culture all figure prominently in the plot, and readers may not feel equally engaged in each of the novel's lengthy episodes. But Bray's wildly imagined novel, narrated in Cameron's sardonic, believable voice, is wholly unique, ambitious, tender, thought-provoking, and often fall-off-the-chair funny, even as she writes with powerful lyricism about the nature of existence, love, and death. Familiarity with Don Quixote certainly isn't necessary, but those who know the basic plot will want to start over from the beginning and pick up on each sly allusion to the classic story.--Engberg, Gillian Copyright 2009 Booklist.

What Do I Do With It?

Students will take a poster-size map of the United States and chart Cameron's epic journey with clip art and photos from pivotal stops along the way. They can enhance the map in anyway they like as long as they make sure to stick to the path listed in the book.