April 25, 2011
Following her National Book Award win for Mockingbird, Erskine tries her hand at comedy with this story of an undervalued boy learning his considerable worth. Mike's father, a math professor, must teach in Romania for six weeks, so he ships his motherless 14-year-old to live with distant relatives and work on an engineering project to improve Mike's chances of getting into a math magnet school. Mike's dyscalculia, a math disability, telegraphs immediately that this plan won't succeed, but things go wrong in surprising ways. The relatives, Moo and Poppy, are octogenarians grieving the death of their adult son. Moo, a comical but endearing figure, frequently confuses wordsâthe "artesian screw" Mike was supposed to work on is really an "artisan's crew" of woodworkers, building boxes to raise funds to bring a Romanian orphan to live with a widowed minister in town. There are many contrivances: nearly every important character is grieving someone, and Misha, the prospective adoptee, looks exactly like Mike and is wearing a shirt Mike donated to charity. Still, the wacky cast, rewarding character growth, and ample humor make this an effortless read. Ages 10âup.
May 1, 2011
Sent to stay with octogenarian relatives for the summer, 14-year-old Mike ends up coordinating a community drive to raise $40,000 for the adoption of a Romanian orphan. He'll never be his dad's kind of engineer, but he learns he's great at human engineering.
Mike's math learning disability is matched by his widower father's lack of social competence; the Giant Genius can't even reliably remember his son's name. Like many of the folks the boy comes to know in Do Over, Penn.—his great-uncle Poppy silent in his chair, the multiply pierced-and-tattooed Gladys from the bank and "a homeless guy" who calls himself Past—Mike feels like a failure. But in spite of his own lack of confidence, he provides the kick start they need to cope with their losses and contribute to the campaign. Using the Internet (especially YouTube), Mike makes use of town talents and his own webpage design skills and entrepreneurial imagination. Math-definition chapter headings (Compatible Numbers, Zero Property, Tessellations) turn out to apply well to human actions in this well-paced, first-person narrative. Erskine described Asperger's syndrome from the inside in Mockingbird (2010). Here, it's a likely cause for the rift between father and son touchingly mended at the novel's cinematic conclusion.
A satisfying story of family, friendship and small-town cooperation in a 21st-century world. (Fiction. 10-14)
(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
July 1, 2011
Gr 6-9-Mike's father, a brilliant engineering professor, is disappointed that he does not have a brilliant, mathematically inclined son and is forcing him to spend the summer working on remedial math and engineering projects to get him ready for high school. When he is offered a university teaching job in Romania, Mike ends up staying with his great-aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania. Moo can barely see, and Poppy is catatonic since the death of their son. Mike becomes involved in a project to help Karen, a local teacher, adopt a child from Romania. However, the country's adoption laws have changed, and now she has just three weeks to scrape together $40,000 for adoption fees, so Mike and the rest of the town work together to help her. Before he realizes it, he is in charge of the whole operation. It's a huge undertaking for a 14-year-old as it involves a web campaign, eBay marketing, and a town festival. Now if only he can get Poppy out of his armchair and working on the artisan boxes he promised to sell before his son's death, they might just make their deadline. The eccentric characters' over-the-top behaviors border on the ridiculous, and kids will be laughing throughout much of the novel. Unfortunately, the story ends before enough money is raised. While parts of the novel are heartwarming, the ending is likely to leave readers frustrated.-Melyssa Kenney, Parkville High School, Baltimore, MD
Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
July 1, 2011
To satisfy his mathematician father, Mike is spending the summer with relatives in Pennsylvania to work on a town engineering project--or so he thinks. Instead, he finds the community focused on raising $40,000 to help one of their own adopt a Romanian orphan. Despite many laugh-out-loud moments, the book's heart is essentially serious, as Mike comes to realize his own strengths.
(Copyright 2011 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
July 1, 2011
Mike's father is a brilliant mathematician who is determined that his son attend the math magnet high school. Fourteen-year-old Mike knows that with his dyscalculia, a math disability, he would be miserable there. He hopes that spending the summer with elderly relatives and working on a project to build an "artesian screw" will prove to his father that he has mastered enough math. When he reaches Pennsylvania, he finds that his great-uncle Poppy sits catatonic in a chair, his great-aunt Moo has worked out strategies to cope with their power being shut off, and the whole town is focused not on an engineering project but on trying to raise $40,000 to help one of the town adopt a Romanian orphan. (It's an "artisans' crew" that's being engineered, to make wooden boxes to sell.) Erskine weaves together a large but entertaining cast of characters, including vibrant Moo with her terrifying driving skills, and Past, the homeless man who dispenses good advice from his office on a park bench. She opens each chapter with a related math principle, such as "regroup" or "zero property," and the reader along with Mike tries to sort out the often-puzzling behavior of the (perhaps overdrawn) townspeople, each with his or her own struggle in life. Despite many laugh-out-loud moments, the heart of the book is essentially serious, as Mike comes to realize what his own strengths really are. susan dove lempke
(Copyright 2011 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)