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Gorman, Carol
6 Reviews
(4)
4-6
Eighth-grade nemeses Mick and Boot are ordered by their principal to play games in order to reach an accord. Alternating chapters give each boy's perspective on his difficult life and on the scheming girl who manipulates them both. Though the story drags at first, the book provides an insightful, realistic, and sobering look at the game of life.
Reviewer: Abby Harper Kingsbury
(3)
4-6
Charlie desperately wants to play baseball on his town's team. Flustered by a bully, he fails his try-outs but visiting Negro League player Luther Peale offers to coach him. However, 1950s small town Iowa isn't ready for Luther, and racial tensions soon erupt, fueled by a mystery surrounding Luther's past. A bit predictable, this well-paced novel is nevertheless engaging.
Reviewer: Lauren Aimonette LIang
(3)
4-6
Jerry Flack, from Dork on the Run, returns in another story of middle-school angst. The busy plot finds Jerry preparing for the sixth-grade Elizabethan Festival, helping his little sister put on a play, and enduring a number of indignities (including wearing a dress) to help his girlfriend acquire a dog. Jerry's continuing growth is convincingly detailed in this amusing story.
Reviewer: Peter D. Sieruta
(2)
4-6
In this sequel to Dork in Disguise, Jerry Flack is still an eyeglass-wearing, science-loving sixth grader with knobby knees. When he runs for class president against popular smart-aleck Gabe, the campaign soon devolves into a series of dirty tricks. Deciding to embrace and celebrate his own lack of cool, Jerry breezes to victory in a fast-paced story that will appeal to the dork in us all.
Reviewer: Peter D. Sieruta
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
September, 2002
(2)
4-6
Jerry Flack, a sixth-grade dork, gets lessons in coolness from his new friend Brenda. Jerry is accepted into the cool clique but inevitably learns that being cool means sublimating his true interests. It's a familiar story with a number of stereotyped characters, but humor keeps the plot jumping, and the novel's resolution is admirably restrained.
Reviewer: Peter D. Sieruta
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
January, 2000
(4)
4-6
Lizard is shocked when she wins a spot in the mall's fashion show and modeling competition. She couldn't care less about modeling, but the cash prize is her ticket to finally see the Cubs play. Her problem: stage fright. The story relies too often on telling rather than showing, but Lizard--simultaneously mature and confident, and beguilingly naïve--is a refreshingly genuine adolescent heroine.
Reviewer: Emma Loy-Santelli
6 reviews
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