I Have A Bad Feeling About This

Jeff Strand

     This book is pure humor, which means readers will need to be old enough to appreciate it rather than taking the story seriously.  The first page, other peoples' reviews of the book, is actually worth reading.  There is one use of the f word that would need to be blacked out, after which it could be used in a 7th and 8th grade library. 

     Henry and his friend Randy go to a 2-week survival camp, which promises to make men out of wimpy boys. Their instructor, Max, is well-muscled and intimidating, but well-meaning.  My favorite scenes are when Max tries to teach the boys and comments on their complete incompetence.  Erik, a secret nerd, is more well-built than the rest.  Jackie is a 13-year-old with low self-esteem and green hair.  Stu is "tall and gawky."  

     When the Survival Games finally begin (the kids fight with paintball guns and knives), Henry is the first one out, only to return to camp and discover that Max has been murdered by three evil men: Mr. Grand, Chad, and Ethan.  After escaping from them by pretending to vomit and pulling a fake grenade on them, he runs back to the woods.  The boys are soon engaged in a battle against the men, aided by a girl from a nearby music camp, Monica.  In typical YA fashion, Monica ends up dating and kissing Henry.  

full ride

Margaret Peterson Haddix

     Haddix's books have an impressive amount of variety, a sharp contrast to the authors that use the same plots and simply replace the characters.  As a grade schooler, I thought she was the absolute master of plot twists and cliff hangers at the ends of chapters.  Even as a college student, these books continue to capture my attention, and I genuinely enjoy reading them.  This book would be a good addition to a 5th-8th grade library, though its length (343 pages) may make it more appealing for avid readers.

Summary:  Becca is a popular 8th grader with a rich family when her dad, Roger Jones, is suddenly arrested and sent to prison for white collar crimes after a nationally televised trial.  With the help of her father's lawyer, Mr. Trumbull, she and her mother go into hiding by moving to Deskins, Ohio.  She begins high school while her mother works as a nurse.  Instead of hanging out with the popular kids, she decides to lay low and ends up becoming a part of the "nerd" group.  

       Fast forward to Becca's senior year.  Her first friend, Jala, has graduated early due to pressure from her family and started attending Ohio State, but she still has Stuart (rich, sometimes obnoxious, determined to go to an Ivy League school), Rosa (closer to Becca than the boys, also poor, watches the popular girls with her since it reminds her of telenovelas), and Oscar (a bit less studious, humorous, and kind). 

       Her mother tells her that it is too dangerous for her to apply for financial aid, so Becca begins looking for scholarships.  The Whitney Court Scholarship seems to be the answer to all her problems, and all she has to do is write an essay about a member of Whitney's graduating class.  After looking through the yearbooks, in which Whitney appears everywhere, she decides that Whitney is the only person worth writing about.  As she talks to former teachers and neighbors, she finds that they refuse to talk about Whitney's life after high school.  She finds two newspaper articles on the deep web about a DUI and suspected drug use,  which lead her to conclude that Whitney threw away her life.            She becomes suspicious that the scholarship is another scam of her father and writes a scathing letter to her father, but simply saves it on her computer.  She is contacted as a finalist and goes in to the interview, only to find out that Whitney has schizophrenia, and she was invited to the interview because the Courts think she is mentally ill.  She sent in her rant about her father instead of her real essay about Whitney.  She tries to prove her identity by finding her birth certificate online, only to discover it is gone.  She runs home.

        Her mother reveals that the real reason they are in hiding is that her father has information against Excellerand, a corrupt computer company like Google or Microsoft.  To silence him, they may attack Becca and her mother.  Since Becca revealed her identity to Mr. Court, who reported it to Ms. Stela, her guidance counselor, who made a post online, Becca and her mother need to contact Mr. Trumbull to ask him for new identities.  Their only safe way to communicate is by mail, which is too slow, so Becca goes on a college trip with her friends, with the secret intention of visiting Mr. Trumbull.  When she visits him, she is accidentally handed a letter by the new receptionist.  She discovers her father is imprisoned there in Atlanta, not California, as the letters they receive through Mr. Trumbull's office indicated.  She visits her father and discovers that Mr. Trumbull has been faking the correspondence between her father and mother, as well as the entire Excellerand threat, so that he can blackmail Excellerand.  He made them believe that Roger had evidence against them that he did not, using the disappearance of Becca and her mother as proof.

        Roger tells Becca what she must do now (after she decides against his first idea, blackmailing Mr. Trumbull).  Becca and her mother gather vocal evidence against Mr. Trumbull in an FBI sting operation, which ends with his arrest.  Becca is now free to keep her identity and go to college.

Crossing Over

Ruth Irene Garrett with Rick Farrant

    Garrett describes her choice to leave her Old Order Amish community to marry Ottie, a man with a lively personality who was twice her age.  She knew him through his work as a driver for the Amish and a patient of her mother, a reflexologist.
    Garrett describes her fond memories, such as playing "horse and buggy" as a child, serving as a teacher, and love for her mother, as well as some of the problems within the Amish community.  The Amish, who consider themselves Christian, trace their roots to the Anabaptist movement and the teachings of Jacob Ammann.  Some of the doctrinal issues include absence of the assurance of salvation, omission of the Great Commission, a focus on tradition and man-made rules such as the Ordnung, and a reliance on works to be saved, rather than the grace of God through the work of Christ Jesus.  Garrett mentions that if many Amish are asked whether they will go to heaven, they will reply, "That's God's choice."  She also describes how Amish are discouraged from reading the Bible and conduct church services and pray in German, even comparing this to the practices of the pre-Reformation Catholic Church.  On a more personal level, she relates her experiences with a father who ridiculed and raged at his wife and children, at times physically punishing them out of unmerited anger.
     Overall, it appears to me that Garrett found sounder doctrine after leaving the Amish.  She refutes each of the points of false doctrine listed above.  As well as the aid of a Lutheran church, a key reason for this knowledge is her dedicated study of the Bible.  I do think, however, that Jeremiah 48:10, "A curse upon him who is lax in doing the Lord's work!  A curse on him who keeps his sword from bloodshed!" deserves more context when Garrett uses it as a proof passage against pacification.  The prophet speaks about God's judgment upon unbelieving Moab through the swords of the unbelieving Babylonians.  While this passage may be related to the topic, I believe there are clearer passages in the Bible, such as commands to the Israelites to fight wars, which directly address the topic of Christians serving as soldiers.  Her use of 1 John 3:16 on the same topic is beautiful, an encouragement for all our current military members and veterans.
     She does, however, describe how she rationalized sleeping with Ottie before marrying him, as well as arguing that divorce is better than living together and hating one another.  I believe this helped me understand how confusing it must be to know that a church has false doctrine, but then not know what to throw out and what to keep.  In addition, Ottie had been married 3 times before, and she describes her new Lutheran pastor's reaction to this only as one of acceptance, mentioning that the sin of divorce is not unforgivable.  While this is certainly true, in the spirit of Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, I hope that the pastor also discussed the importance of marriage, the fact that divorce is a sin, and possibly repentance.
     One part that struck me was on page 123:  "With the Amish, it was the Amish first.  With the Lutherans, it was God first.  Faith to the Lutherans was a relationship with God, not with an institution."  For those of us in the WELS, I think this is a good reminder.  While this could appear to border on the side of not caring about doctrine and saying all Christians should just be one big happy family, she shows in the book that she cares about doctrine.  It is true that we are loyal to God and the Bible first, not our denomination.  Would she have this impression in the WELS?

Teasing Secrets From the Dead

by Emily Craig, Ph.D.

     This book chronicles Dr. Craig's career as a medical illustrator-turned-forensic anthropologist.  She details her work on numerous homicide cases, as well as on the sites of tragedies such as the World Trade Center, Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal Building, and the mass murder/suicide of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas.  She has traveled to crime scenes located in the rural backwoods, on a steep cliff above a quickly flowing river, and even deep in an abandoned mine. Portions of the book are appropriately graphic, enough to convince me that I never want her job!  Even so, it is an interesting read, providing insight into the burdens and victories of the men and women who work in law enforcement, morgues, and at the sites of mass tragedies.
     One thing that struck me during the book was the amount of times she described the benefit of being able to work from touch, not from sight.  I suspect that she is at least partially a tactile learner, but her use of touch goes beyond just learning.  She also describes the role of intuition in creating sculptures and examining bones, which at times includes the need to backtrack by finding the scientific details that her brain unconsciously processed to lead her to a conclusion.  She references extraordinary coincidences or strokes of luck, in which a Christian can see the hand of God at work.

Annoying

by Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman

     This book is like an extended NPR feature, a fashionable science book for the masses.  In this way, it reminded me of Quiet.  In some cases, however, I was able to put to use my high school vocabulary and studies from courses such as anatomy and chemistry.  There is no official branch of science dealing with annoyance, but this book compiles applicable research from a varied scientific disciplines, ranging from psychology to biology.  These topical changes, as well as the conversational tone, help keep the reader's attention.
   
     General Thesis:  Sounds, smells, habits, and even tastes can annoy humans.  It is difficult to find an agreed-upon scientific definition of emotion, much less annoyance, but the basic recipe appears to include:
    1.  Uncontrollable
    2.  Distracting or unpleasant
    3.  Unpredictable, often including an unknown duration

     Skunk Spray:  An example of an annoying smell is skunk spray.  Part of the annoyance seems to be cognitive and learned.  As anecdotal evidence, one woman's mother said, "Oh, what a pleasant smell!" and to this day, her daughter does not mind the smell of skunk spray.  In a blind smell test, subjects reacted differently to identical samples labeled with cognitively unpleasant sources.  "Parmesan cheese" received a positive rating, while the same scent labeled as "vomit" received a negative reaction.
     From a more biological perspective, the smell of skunk spray comes from "sulfur-laden molecule called thiols" (p.62).  Thiols are associated with decay of living materials, such as food.  In low concentrations they can be pleasing, as in coffee or wine.
     The olfactory epithelium has receptors which receive molecules from air. If molecules remain in the receptor long enough, olfactory fatigue causes neurons to stop firing, leading the brain to believe the odor is gone.  This is why the old-fashioned tomato juice method seemed effective.  After spending so much time washing their pets, owners didn't smell the odor as strongly.  There is, however, an effective remedy, using hydrogen peroxide to create a chemical reaction.  Oxidation produces a disulfide when hydrogen peroxide reacts with the thiols.  Baking soda is also a helpful ingredient.

Fun Vocab:

• Hedonic Reversal--Enjoying something that may be considered inherently painful or characterized by negative emotions.  For example, riding a roller coaster can be a positive experience, despite the negative emotion of fear.  People willingly eat chili peppers, even though it produces a burning sensation in the mouth.
• Electrophiles--Compounds that try to share electrons, found in many chemical irritants.
• TRPA1--"trip-a-one"--transient receptor potential A1--a receptor in all invertebrates and vertebrates for chemical irritants

Annoying Features:  Typos.

• p.19--"We've gotten a lot of letters from people who put them in coworkers' offices and gotten a lot of entertainment value out of them."
• p.66--"Kingsley is trying track down..."
• p.137-138--Switches repeatedly between Ungar and Unger

Also, p.68 says, "Certainly, red i a color that elicit a kind of annoyance that matadors in Spanish bull rings are professionally familiar with."  This has been busted by MythBusters.  Bulls are color blind for red and green; the movement draws their attention.

• http://www.livescience.com/33700-bulls-charge-red.html
• http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/color-red-makes-bulls-go-ballistic/

Summer Reading

The Spell Book of Listen Taylor
    The style of this book is similar to Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book because it is very straightforward.  The lack of emotion in the tone produces a feeling of detachment and contributes to the unrealistic and bizarre nature of the narration.  Devices such as personification add beauty, but are also part of the unusual style.  For example, the first sentence, "After midnight, the apartment waited, still in the moonlight and the heat," is rather typical.  Yet Jaclyn Moriarty takes it a step further with the words, "A moth touched its wing to the front porch light, and the apartment cleared its throat sharply."  Furthermore, the next two sentences describe a "sleepy confusion of boxes" and a ladder laying on its stomach, a virtual explosion of personification.
      This is one of my least favorite books.  I kept reading it because I like to finish what I start...and, partially, I did want to see how everything fit together.  The main reason for this is the unusual tone, but in addition, it seems that everyone in the book is having an affair with someone.  I assume that this is part of the themes related to secrecy and privacy, but it also seems to reflect our society's casual acceptance of adultery.  Due to the style of writing, the reader does not feel a connection to the characters.  I did, however, appreciate the author's skill in weaving together the abundance of seemingly unrelated facts and story lines, only fully explaining it toward the end.
     After writing this post, I looked up reviews.  I think that the NY Times review explains a lot about my opinions.  Essentially, it describes this book as an adult book that may not really interest teenagers...I haven't been a teen for several years, and it doesn't especially interest me.  It also mentions the "sometimes foolhardy" women...another reason I didn't like the characters.  I don't think the "sometimes" was a necessary part of that phrase.

Adrift
     Adrift is the fictional story of 5 teenagers adrift on the Atlantic Ocean, yet it also includes layers of storytelling such as an initially unknown past traumatic experience shared by Matt and John.  The two working class boys meet three rich friends on the beach, a contrast that exists throughout the story.  JoJo and his girlfriend, Estefania, are visitors from Brazil.  Driana, who catches Matt's eye, invites Matt and John to a party in her family's mansion. After the party, the teens discover that Estefania has gone out windsurfing at night and set out in a neighbor's boat to rescue her.  Unfortunately, they do not have enough gas to return to shore...Major themes of the novel include the cost of survival, the consequences of guilt, and the effect of trauma on relationships.
   
Running Out of Time
     One of Margaret Peterson Haddix's first books, Running Out of Time still includes her signature plot twists, but seems a bit less complicated than her other books.  Also characteristic of Haddix, the historical details and perspectives come to life naturally through careful attention to detail.  I was also surprised by the overall frightening experience of Jessie in our world, including encounters with drunken and apparently lustful males (though not a graphic or objectionable scene for young readers), the skepticism of the media, and the at times illogical functioning of the justice and social services systems.