Sherman Alexie: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

I haven't been reviewing lately because I haven't read much that got me excited. I can't tell you how many books I've read a few chapters of, only to put them aside for later. And then I picked up Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. 

Sherman Alexie has long been a favorite author of mine, and he has yet to fail me. He writes about his experiences growing up on a Spokane reservation in Washington. Alexie is intelligent and witty and his writing is so wonderful that it has the ability to pull me back into my interest in reading.

Junior narrates Alexie's latest novel with all the candor and wit of a middle school boy. Junior is about as average as one can get. He's not tall, he's not a bully, he's not the smartest. He's just average. Until he decides to go to school in Reardan where all the kids are middle class and white. Suddenly there's nothing average about Jumior and he is faced with the fact that he no longer fits in anywhere. The indian kids at home think he's a traitor, trying to be a white kid. The white kids in Reardan think that he will always be a strange indian kid. Junior finds himself struggling with his identity while also handling real-life situations that only further alienate him from the two worlds he lives in.

I can't recommend Sherman Alexie enough. His writing is so unique and so charming. His stories are so real and so relatable. Alexie gets me excited about reading again!

Rating: $$$

Schooled: Gordon Korman

I picked up Schooled at my friend’s house while babysitting because it had a bright and interesting cover. A short, young reader novel, Schooled is a modern story of Tarzan for middle schoolers. Capricorn Anderson grew up on a hippie commune with his grandmother, Rain. When Rain takes a fall and is put in the hospital for six weeks, Cap is forced to lived in a suburban home and attend public school as an eighth grader.
The Tarzan parallels are pretty obvious; like Tarzan, Capricorn is taken out of his home habitat and thrust into a totally foreign culture and treated like a freak. In the name of tradition, Capricorn is nominated the eighth grade class president because his peers assume he will make a fool of himself since he is such a total loser. He wears tie dye and has a long mop of blond hair. He practices Tai Chi on the school’s front lawn before class starts. And he’s a total hippie with no contemporary references. Cap doesn’t even realize how different he is. Nor does he understand that being different is the kiss of death in eighth grade.
Of course it wouldn’t be a young reader novel if there wasn’t a really obvious moral. The moral here is that being different can be good. Cap takes on the responsibility of being class president and unites the entire middle school. His reign is not without mistakes, but ultimately, everyone learns an important lesson and they all live happily ever after.
I have to say that I really enjoyed this book. Yes, it’s trite, but it’s a sweet kind of trite. And the characters are really enjoyable. Everyone, at some point in their life, has felt as alien as Capricorn in a public school, but we survive. We make our own way and create our own niche, which is a crucial piece of information for middle school readers.

Rating: $$