Gentlemen: A Review

Title: Gentlemen
Author: Michael Northrop
Pages: 256
Recommended: With reservations
Age/Gender: 8th Grade and Up, Boys or Girls


I consumed Gentlemen, by Michael Northrop, in two big bites. The protagonist, Micheal (sic.), is a wounded, tough-talking teenager who hangs with a tough group of guys. One of the group goes missing, and the boys soon come to suspect their English teacher, who starts acting strangely while teaching the book Crime and Punishment in the boys' English class.

The only reservations I have about recommending this book stem from the fact that the protagonist never really steps up and becomes the hero of the story. Instead, he stands by while his friends behave badly, and only by chance does he avoid any great wrongdoing. Perhaps the author is writing his own version of a modern existentialist novel; I just hope young readers are sophisticated enough to understand that the hero's lack of action to stop wrongdoing makes him just as culpable as his fellows.

The Last Book in the Universe

Book Review: The Last Book in the Universe

Author: Rodman Philbrick

Highly recommended for: Boys and girls, middle school and up.

Genre: Sci-fi/cyberpunk/futuristic dystopia

If you liked: The Giver, Riddley Walker, The City of Ember, Fahrenheit 451, Feed

What's not to like about this story? It has all my favorite elements going for it: the setting is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the protagonist is a disabled yet plucky misfit who must go on a quest to save the only person who has ever shown him any love (his adoptive sister), and one of the central tensions of the story is whether or not the last book in the universe will be destroyed.

Spaz, our boy hero, lives in a nightmarish future after the so-called "shake," a planetwide natural disaster that turns the world into a post apocalyptic wasteland. He encounters the idiosyncratic Ryter, an old dude who just so happens to be the last person in existence who knows how to write books. Ryter wants to complete his life story (in book form) before he dies. As the story progresses, the two must embark on a mutual quest that takes them to Eden, an enclave of priveleged supergenetically engineered humans.

This book is fun to read, and I believe it will be enjoyed equally by boys or girls.

Check out the more detailed summary on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Book_in_the_Universe

The White Darkness

Review: The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean
Age suggestion: High School and adult
Cultural references: Antarctica, Symmes's Hole, Deafness/Disability
Recomended: Highly

The White Darkness is one of the most original books I have read in a long time. The narrator is a 15 year old girl who is willingly abducted by her eccentric uncle to go along on an expedition to the South Pole. The book is quite masterful in its characterization of the narrator in that only slowly does the reader realize that the narrator herself is both unreliable and eccentric, if not quite as crazy as her uncle. The book is suspenseful and fun to read. I suggest it for high school and above because I think most middle schoolers will miss some of the subtle ways the author introduces the foibles and self-delusions of the narrator.