Title: Schooled
Author: Gordon Korman
Genre: Fiction, ages 9-12
Publication date: October 2007
Format: hardcover book
While walking through my public library the other day, my eye was drawn to the bright yellow “school bus” colored cover of a book with a bold lettered title: “Schooled”. The book was in the library’s ‘Young Adult’ section and the publisher states this book is for ages 9-12. A quick look at the back cover revealed the main character was an uber-isolated homeschooled boy from a wacky, petering out hippie commune, who is thrown into culture shock when he is forced to attend eighth grade in a public school.
I just had to borrow it and read it to see what the latest fictional representation of a homeschooler was.
I read the book in a few hours of one day. It was the type of story that when reading, I wanted to know what happened next and so I was compelled to read it in all the spare time I had in that day, including staying up to read it at night (foregoing the usual television watching).
The homeschooled boy is in many ways the worst representation of being a social misfit-homeschooler that I’ve ever seen, and the middle schoolers at public school are the most horridly behaving than I’ve ever heard of. Other main characters are the very popular boys and girls and the former biggest “loser” in the school. The hippie homeschooled boy is basically tormented in school to the point where it would be impossible for the reader not to pity him. Rather than having the focus of the book be about blaming the boy’s guardian (his grandmother) for raising him as a misfit, we instead are led to hate the public school kids and to admire the character traits and actions of the homeschooled kid.
The boy is in the hero role and one by one the students learn to like him and some to love him. He has his principles and his lifestyle choices and he lives authentically even when he is criticized and bullied because of them. The author does a good job of getting the reader to root for the hero and to hate the villain(s).
I won’t reveal how the story wraps up.
Although I’m annoyed that once again a homeschooler is portrayed in children’s literature as being a total and complete social misfit I wasn’t that angry in the end because it all ends up working out. I can’t help but admire how even the most radical beliefs and actions of the main character end up yielding positive results.
The story hooks readers in and that is a good thing for motivating young readers to read books. The book would appeal to both girls and boys although I’m sure that boys in particular would like the story. I bet reluctant readers would like the story as well because of the good storytelling. This isn’t stellar literature or a classic by any means but it is a good story to read for entertainment or for reading fluency development.
There are many opportunities for talking points about how preteens and teens treat each other, meanness, cliques in school, judging others based on appearance and stereotypes. This book could lead to discussion about how teens can choose to live by their principles versus to conform to blend in and also the consequences of doing bad things in order to gain popularity in school.
External Links
Author Gordon Korman’s website
You can read sample chapters of Schooled on the author’s website by going to the home page and clicking on the “Schooled” link. (The site won’t give me a unique URL to link to.)
Technorati Tags: Schooled, Gordon Korman, children’s book review.
Given Away
6 hours ago
7 comments:
Interesting, I'll bet the author wanted the unbelieving in HS to read this and get reeled in, in order to find the buried treasure at the end of the book. I'd like to read it. Great review btw. Excellent job!
Oh wow. When I was a kid I read his novels. The appeal was that HE was a kid (in his teens) when he wrote his first novel (This Can't Be Happening at McDonald Hall), he was a fellow Canadian (Young adult literature for young canucks was mostly American stuff at that time) and he was so darn funny.
Good to see he's still writing, thanks Christine!
I don't think this book has been nominated for the Cybil Award for YA FIction yet. If you liked it well enough to nominate it, you could go over and do that: http://dadtalk.typepad.com/cybils/2007/10/young-adult-fic.html
I've already nominated a book, so it'll have to be some one else.
This reminded me...Did you ever read "Surviving the Applewhite's"?I run an online learning service - Time4Learning.com - which has that book in the curriculum and once got criticized for it as inappropriate for homeschoolers. What do you thing? The reality is that we license the curriculum and can't really make changes.
No, I haven't yet read "Surviving the Applewhite's" but I do own it.
I hated "Alice I Think" by Susan Juby. I had blogged that review two years ago, here.
http://thethinkingmother.blogspot.com/2005/11/juv-lit-book-review-alice-i-think-by.html
With "Schooled" and "Alice..." both main characters are super-weird homeschoolers who then go to public school and are shown to be misfits. However in "Alice..." the schooled kids are bullies and nasty individuals but they come across as 'normal' and 'typical'. In "Schooled" the schooled kids are portrayed in a way that the reader is led to dislike them and to like the weird homeschooler.
The fact that real life homeschooled kids exist that are good kids who are pretty normal would I guess, not make a great story if the point of the story is to highlight social differences and what comes from that conflict. Even as unrealistic as the whole thing is in the first place, there would not be much of a story of a pretty normal homeschooled kid entering school, right?
I know families who happily homeschooled and later sent their kids to school. There is not much of a story there when that kid adjusts well to attending school. No story, no book, no entertainment, and so on.
Maybe I should stop looking for good realistic models of homeschoolers in fiction.
The Applewhite's book starts with a traditionally-school adolescent who is really messed up. He is sent as a foster kid to a rural homeschooling "unschooling" family full of some stereotypical characters. The cityboy "comes of age" through his experiences on the farm and with the family. I reviewed the Applewhite book as fine.
I actually like Surviving the Applewhites. Yeah, the homeschooling family is a bit kooky. But they are a charming kooky. They are the folks who are able to pull things off, despite being the wierd artsy family in town.
I'm not at all an unschooler and I still loved that book. I don't know if I'd be as amused by Schooled.
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