Books Love Me – Reviews

Anna Hanson, 16, thinks her life is boring. She’s a prefect in school, pays attention in class, goes home, does her homework, and if she feels like it, she’ll talk with her mom for a while. Her mother suffers from stress and is unable to go to work. Anna lives with her mom while her dad’s remarried and her brother lives with him.

The story starts with Anna in class, learning about the play, Macbeth, when a new boy enters the classroom. He’s not dressed in the school’s uniform, has a shaven head and looks like he’d rather be anywhere else than there. Anna is the only person to introduce herself to him after class.

Anna doesn’t really belong to a particular group or clique in school. So when a girl from her class, Karen, invites her out for the night, she was quite happy to go. Finally, some plans with friends! She found out later that Karen was only using her as a substitute friend. She then left the club and went home, feeling that there wouldn’t ever be anyone who would genuinely want to be friends with her. That’s how she was mugged on her way home. By the new boy.

His name is Craig Ritchie but Anna calls him Ritchie. Instead of reporting him to the police, she kind of bonded with him. He told her stories of his life, his perspective of the modern world and she was utterly fascinated by them. Perhaps this boy was her gateway to a much more exciting and fulfilling life.

Ritchie and his pals are thieves. They steal stuff from other people because they feel that they deserve to do that. They are like the outcasts in society: one has been bullied, Ritchie has been ridiculed in school, abandoned by his father who left his mother, etc. So they think that robbing from rich people is like taking back what should be theirs.

And suddenly Anna pitches plans and ideas to Ritchie about how both of them can steal something from a store and later give away their ‘earnings’ to somebody who needs them. They’d steal from stores that have branches and franchises all over the world. Since these big companies are already making millions, a few lost pounds wouldn’t hurt them. Anna saw themselves as Robin Hoods. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

I am familiar with the saying ‘Crime doesn’t pay’ and I’m sure most of you have heard of that too. Well, I was wondering how these two kids will end up in the end. It is interesting to read how they tried to steal from a bookshop without getting caught. But I was skeptical. Wouldn’t they be caught on the CCTV? I doubt that the shops would leave any area unguarded especially if it’s some huge store like Borders or something.

This book does make us reflect on issues like exploitation and consumerism. You should read the part where they talk about shoes and the Third World. Who made them? How much were their wages? How much are we paying for the shoes?

All right, I thought Anna really went through an extreme transformation. Since she met Ritchie, she’s become braver and in a way, happier. But not necessarily wiser. Ritchie is also another complicated character.

I can’t say that I enjoyed this book. It was a slow start but it did pick up pace when Anna and Ritchie go Robin Hooding. I guess this book tells us that we learn things by making mistakes.

Buy Something Wicked

I may be too old to read this kind of books but I do enjoy them so much! Until now, I’ve already read four books by Jean Ure and their protagonists are all approaching their teen years. Ah, who cares? These books make me laugh out loud so I don’t have a problem with how young the characters are.

In Hunky Dory, the narrator is Dorian Jones or Dory and he’s “having terrible trouble with girls”. According to him, girls in his form keep acting weird around him. For example, a girl named Amy Wilkerson sat next to him in Geography class and kept getting cosy leaning up to him while talking to her friend who was sitting on his other side. And another girl kept beaming at him in class.

What makes it even more interesting is that Dory’s younger sister’s friend, Linzi, has a crush on Dory. Dory’s younger sister, Annabel or Microdot (Dory’s nickname for her) regularly gives Dory personality quizzes to do so that she can write his profile to tell what kind of person he is. She also hints to him about why he keeps avoiding Linzi. Dory just goes along with these tests to humour his sister.

Dory cannot understand why other girls can’t be like the Herb, his good friend. Her real name is Rosemary but the Herb is her nickname. I don’t know how she got it anyway. Dory, the Herb and Dory’s other good friend, Aaron, spend their free time in Dory’s garden, digging a hole to look for artifacts. Dory is passionately fond of dinosaurs and hopes to become some sort of dinosaur archaeologist when he grows up.

When Dory finds out that his best friend, Aaron, is going out with a girl, he becomes even more confused. He had always thought that his friends were never into girls and that they think girls are quite silly. He is also puzzled when the Herb acts weird sometimes. Once when he suggested inviting another girl over to help dig the hole, the Herb went quite ballistic.

I like the illustrations that go with the story. They’ll appear after every few pages and it helps the reader to visualize what’s going on. A quick, funny and perfect read if you want to know what young kids are up to nowadays.

Buy Hunky Dory

It’s already bad enough worrying about grades and exams during high school without having to add peer pressure and other juvenile issues like bullying and picking on new kids. Have you ever been the new kid in a new school before? How did your school treat the new ones? Were your classmates nice or nasty to them?

16-year-old John Malarkey is the new kid in town and in school, Brook High. He and his mom have just moved to this new town and his mom decides to open a store selling second hand books. (Wouldn’t I like to live near that one!)

Before this, I have never come across the word ‘malarkey’ before. On the cover of this book, the definition given for the word is ‘bullshit’. Yikes! Imagine having such a name! But I also just looked up Answers.com and it also means ‘exaggerated or foolish talk, usually intended to deceive’, which in short means ‘bullshit’. Returning to the book, it suits well as the title and the name of the boy. John Malarkey did more than once tried to talk himself out of trouble.

So one day, a beautiful classmate speaks to John and points him out to two other boys who decide to nab his school bag and run away with it. He naturally chases the boys to try to get his bag back. He failed to catch them but needn’t worry because his bag showed up on his desk in his next class. With a stolen teacher’s wallet in it. John is then accused of stealing.

With John taking the blame for a couple of thefts in school, a shady group called the Tailors who loves to wear Adidas shoes, runs the school like never before. They sell stuff like cigarettes and drugs at the tuck shop but the teachers know nothing about it. They also sell signed report cards without teachers’ comments – meaning the students can be their own teacher and write out their own comments!

They don’t even spare the smart kids out of their cunning schemes. The brainy ones make up the Homework Club and they’re forced to do the Tailors’ assignments with no time to concentrate on their own. John then tries to enlist one of the Homework Club kids’ help. What he plans to do is to clear his name as a thief and also to bring down the Tailors. Both in less than 24 hours.

It’s quite an exciting read and felt suspenseful. I also didn’t realize that a few hours in school could feel like a few days! The first 89 pages were focused on what John did after having his bag stolen by the Tailor boys. I thought it went on for days but it’s only hours actually.

You can say that John’s the high school James Bond. A group of trouble makers pick on him, he comes up with plans and tactics, faces the leader of the pack and then figures out on how to proceed from there. Pick up this book to read about how a new kid fights off the bullies in his new school.

Other Reviews: Chicklish

Buy Malarkey