Chat Room by Kristin Butcher

 Linda is a lonely ninth grader with one friend: Janice "Beastly", the school bully and least popular girl. When Linda's high school introduces chat rooms to the school website, she is sucked into chatting and is soon addicted to the computer, despite Janice's persistent warnings. In the school chat rooms Linda (aka Roxane on the Internet) meets another anonymous student nicknamed Cyrano; a character from her favorite move. The two quickly get to know each other while chatting online.
When Cyrano finds out who Roxane really is, Linda receives flowers, poems, chocolates and finally a ticket to the school dance, and assumes that Cyrano is her secret admirer and he has invited her to the dance. But when Linda misses her bus and is walking home from school in the pouring rain and a twelfth-grader offers her a ride home, she finds out that this guy is Cyrano. He mentions nothing about liking her or the gifts he sent, so Linda still thinks he likes her.
The night of the dance, Linda finds out that it was not Cyrano ( Marc Solomon in real life) who has been sending her gifts, but the shy, younger and less popular Chad Sharp. That night, the two learn the hard way how the Internet can trick people; or get them into some serious situations. Linda is forced to tell Chad she does not like him, and Chad has to convince Linda that he is her secret admirer.

I can't say I completely enjoyed this novel. I never expected it to be so good when I picked it up in the first place, but I found many things wrong with it.

The first thing I'd like to mention about Chat Room is how unrealistic it was. Sure, lots of people participate in chatting online and find themselves caught up in some serious issues even greater than the ones addressed in the novel, but Kristin Butcher made Linda into a character who hadn't ever really been interested in the computer. Linda had to psyche up just to join a chat room on the school website, where these days basically everybody has Facebook and/or Twitter and doesn't give a second thought to signing up. And I know that if my school website had chat rooms and forums on it, nobody would take part in them because by the time you're twelve and older, it's not cool to visit your school website unless absolutely necessary. I think the story should have been based on something involving more peer-pressure and a more popular social networking website.

Another thing I saw wrong with Chat Room was how it was written. The characters were constantly talking about the dangers of the Internet, blah blah blah. No teenager and/or child wants to read something they already have to sit through their parents telling them. Chat Room was the kind of book your parents tell you to read and hope that you'll obliviously learn something and recommend it to your friends. The characters were phony, and the dialogue was too mature for their ages. I support these two opinions of mine with the following quote: "Chat rooms are nothing but hangouts for perverts. Anybody who visits them is asking for trouble." -Janice (8)

So now after stating and supporting my opinions that Chat Room is unrealistic, too educational to be attractive to the average teen reader, and phony, my final conclusion is that I will not recommend this novel to anybody I know, for I believe it is not by far the best book I have ever read.

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Pop by Gordon Korman

Publisher: HarperCollins
Copyright: 2009

Marcus Jordan moves to a small town in the summer and doesn't know anybody there. Marcus wants to be on the football season this upcoming year, so he starts practicing in Three Alarm Park. While practicing, Marcus throws the ball really far, almost to the other side of the park. He suddenly sees something while walking to where the ball landed. It was a person! This guy was running towards Marcus and he just couldn't figure out why. Then when the man was close enough to see his face, Marcus realised that this man in fact had his ball! The man stopped in front of Marcus and explained himself to Marcus. After a few minutes of tossing the ball around the mysterious man said he had to go but would see Marcus tomorrow.

When school starts Marcus immediately navigates himself to the field where the tryouts are held. When he gets there he is told that not a lot of new people get onto the team because it is a very tight-knit group who play. In spite of this, he gets on the team, just not the place he wanted.

Marcus has being seeing Charlie a few times a week; he learned that the guy's name was Charlie when they went to the store together and Charlie didn't pay. After a few more weeks of training with Charlie, Marcus realises that he seems a bit odd. Whenever Marcus tries to talk about the last time they trained Charlie doesn't seem to remember.

Marcus goes on the computer and searches diseases that can happen to football players, because when Marcus is told of Charlie's name he remembers that he used to be a famous football player. Marcus finds a site that talks about some of the symptoms Charlie seems to have and finds out that Charlie has developed early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Charlie's family knows he has this disease but the rest of the town doesn't. When Marcus confronts Charlie's daughter at school about his disease she threatens him if he dares to tell anybody about it. Marcus drops the subject for a few weeks then goes and finds Charlie's old school buddy and tells him about what happened to him. Marcus had to tell Mac (Charlie's school buddy) about his disease because Charlie and Marcus were making trouble for one of the shop owners and Marcus was getting blamed for it because Charlie would just walk away.

Marcus and Mac also take Charlie to one of their school reunions when they hear that Charlie is going to get an award and will be put into the school's hall of fame. The only problem is that Marcus didn't tell Mac that he hadn't asked the family if he could take Charlie. The next thing they knew, they had lost Charlie in the excitement. The police found him and took Charlie and Marcus back to their town. Marcus was wondering why they were rushing back so he asked the police officer and he replied that the football team was losing and they had to get Marcus back home so that they could win the game.

Marcus was about to throw the ball to the end zone when out of the corner of his eye he saw Charlie walking towards the back of the bleachers. Marcus ran up the bleachers to Charlie but he was already standing on the bar at the back of the bleachers about to set the other team's Mascot hawk free. Marcus could see Charlie standing on the bar then Marcus blinked. When he opened his eyes again there was no charlie standing on the top of the bar. Marcus knew what had happened and ran down the bleachers and around the side to find Charlie while everybody else ran towards where he had been standing.

It was a small funeral for Charlie and some other famous football players even showed up when they heard the he had died. Even Charlie's son Troy was sort of nice to Marcus during the mourning at Charlie's house.

Gordan Korman wrote this book like a movie and made it feel like he was slowing it down when it came to serious parts but in the happy exciting parts, he wrote it like he was telling a story.

I felt that this book was truly telling both sides of the football world or any sport for that matter, that a sport can be fun and very fulfilling if you honestly love it but on the other side they can also be dangerous and a horrible experience if you don't really love it.

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Radio Fifth Grade by Gordon Korman

Publisher: Scholastic
Copyright: 2006

In Radio Fifth Grade, Benjy Driver's dream is to become a professional radio broadcaster, just like his hero, Eldridge Kestenbaum. Benjy, Mark, and Ellen-Louise are all involved in the school's radio show, 'Kidsview'. To Mark and Ellen-Louise, 'Kidsview' is just something else to do, but to Benjy, it's the start of his career.

The radio show 'Kidsview' has one sponsor: Mr Whitehead, owner of Our Animal Friends pet store. Every week on 'Kidsview', Benjy and his friends present the Mascot of the Week, a pet from Mr Whitehead's store that he is trying to sell. The three producers' problems begin when Winston Churchill, a parrot who is supposed to talk but doesn't, comes on the show as Mascot of the Week. When he doesn't talk on the air, he doesn't sell. And when Winston Churchill does learn how to say something, his chances of selling are cut even slimmer.

Ms. Gucci, Benjy, Mark and Ellen-Louise's teacher, wins the lottery and moves to somewhere in Hawaii, so the three's class get their new teacher, Ms. Panagopulos, who turns the class into a seminar. Getting more homework than ever, Benjy can't seem to find the time to work on the script for 'Kidsview', and he and his friends hatch a plan to get their homework done by turning the questions on their papers into radio-show quiz questions.

Not only is fifth grade turned into a seminar and 'Kidsview' at a risk of being canceled, but Brad, the Venice Menace, comes along onto the show with a story that nobody wants to hear, although his teacher encourages him to share it. The Monday after, the hilarious story of Fuzzy and Puffy is laughed at and mocked behind the author's back. Brad is mistaken and intimidates the entire school to start a Fuzzy and Puffy fan club.

Problems at the radio studio escalate, until Benjy and his friends must prevent their new teacher from tuning in and discovering how they all get 100% on their homework. Not only are Benjy and Mark nearly caught stealing Ms. P's radio and returning it to the store for the complaint 'I hate this radio', but Winston Churchill gets loose in the radio studio and sabotages it.

Benjy, the main character of Radio Fifth Grade, is a serious, hard-working person; when it comes to the radio and his future career. His best friend, Mark, can be bone-headed and impulsive, and the two boys' partner in producing 'Kidsview', Ellen-Louise, is a goody two shoes straight A student whose main goal is to be the smartest, best, and perfect. Gordon Korman takes serious, ignorant, and smart to create three characters that together make Radio Fifth Grade a hilarious and clever plot.

With Gordon Korman, you can't go wrong. I never had my doubts about Radio Fifth Grade. Every novel I have read by Gordon Korman, be it adventure or comedy, I have enjoyed. So when I picked up this book, I didn't know what to expect: comedy, adventure, drama, or all three. From this novel, I'm positive I got comedy and drama, and in its own way, Radio Fifth Grade delivered a magnificent adventure.

Radio Fifth Grade is a timeless novel, first printed in 1989, and brought back into print in 2010. No doubt Radio Fifth Grade will be in print for a while, and might even grow in popularity. Radio Fifth Grade is aimed at elementary students or early high school students, but in my opinion anybody will enjoy it.

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