After months of hiding, he is discovered by Max, a boy of similar age and parallel high integrity and courage, who is experiencing his own set of troubles learning a new language, moving to a new country, and being teased at school. Alone and broke in Europe, he takes things into his own hands to get to safety but ends up having to hide in the basement of a residential house. Two parallel stories, one of a Syrian boy from Aleppo fleeing war, and another of a white American boy, son of a NATO contractor, dealing with the challenges of growing up, intersect at a house in Brussels.Īhmed lost his father while crossing the Mediterranean. Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish). This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. Gradually-too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic-it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. 10-14)Ĭhainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.Įvery four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Characters are white by default.Īnother chortleworthy outing from Korman. (Fiction. The narrative moves swiftly and even becomes madcap toward the end as Donovan regains a friendship and becomes a hero in his own right. As in Ungifted, Korman uses multiple first-person points of view to reveal characters’ responses to Noah and to show how characters change when supergifted Noah becomes superhero Noah. But when Donovan saves a runaway truck from crashing into Megan Mercury’s house, Noah takes credit for the heroic feat and nearly loses Donovan as a friend. He would be a target, a “wedgie looking for a place to happen.” Noah is 4 feet 11 inches tall, the size of a fourth-grader, with the posture of an ”oversize praying mantis.” He has a 200-plus IQ, a grating voice, and a “rocket-scientist vocabulary.” But Noah feels that “being a genius isn’t hard.…What’s hard is being normal.” He’s never had to work to get grades before, so now he goes out of his way to pick activities he’s bad at so he can improve at something, such as wood shop and cheerleading. Noah’s best friend, Donovan Curtis, can’t understand why such a genius would come to Hardcastle Middle School on purpose. In the sequel to Ungifted (2012), Noah Youkilis gets himself kicked out of the Academy for Scholastic Distinction to see what it’s like at regular middle school.
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