Skip to main content

Jeremy Fink-Review

I just finished Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life by Wendy Moss as a required read for my YA Lit class. I had some real issues with this book, and I have to say I was very surprised to find it on a syllabus next to Monster and The Chocolate War.
But, like a good librarian, I will focus on the good first: this book had a beginning, a middle, and an end. The cover is kind of charming. And Jeremy's mom is a librarian. That's about it.
My first issue was the reading level for this book. Jeremy and Lizzie are SO immature, I cannot imagine a teen reading this book. Actions such as throwing up after eating oatmeal with peaches in it (because, at almost 13, Jeremy lives on a steady diet of peanut butter and candy), breaking and entering, and taking things because she "has" to are behaviors all teens will totally relate to (sarcastic tone is not coming through in the text, but I assure you it is there).
The ending is preposterous. I spent the entire book enduring the stuff that happens to these characters convinced that through the magic of everyday life, the box would open and some sort of maturity would be achieved. Nope, instead, the entire plan was plotted by a group of adults and Jeremy had the whole thing handed to him. So the reader is denied even the idea that there is some charm in everyday life. Denied serendipity.
Several years ago, there was a similar book called Sophie's World that I also found to be boring. There, a young girl got letters that explained different philosophers' takes on the meaning of life. It was a yawn-fest, but it was aimed at adults who wanted to learn philosophy. Here we have middle school kids who act like kindergartners, trying to expound on the meaning of life in humorless spurts as they search for keys to a magic box that is supposed to contain the meaning of life. This entire process was planned by a father who was killed accidentally at a young age, but who had the wherewithal to set this all up for his son's 13th birthday in case he was not around. Huh?
If they still made after school specials, this was not good enough to be one.
This book has a waiting list at my library. I am dying to know who is reading this and what age they are. I could not recommend this to any age group. The characters are too babyish for teens, and the plot is too convoluted for middle school kids.
The real shame is that Wendy Moss is coming to a local book festival this weekend, and I do not think I want to read any of her other books. I will be skipping that tent.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Teddy Bear Storytime

Tonight's storytime followed the same format I use for all of my day storytimes as I have temporarily suspended my idea of doing storytime in reverse in order to get the kids sleepy. They only seem to run out into the library to pick out movies and books and the effect is lost. So here is what we did tonight. Our theme was teddy bears, but our night storytime is always wear jammies, bring a lovey, and low action. My opening song is Hello Bubbles which I learned from Read Sing Play here . BTW this woman is a storytime goddess and I have picked up many great ideas on her blog. Story the 1st: The Red Hat by Lita Judge  Why? Because I want to get across to my kids that books do not always have to have words in order for us to "read" them, and I want to give pre-readers a chance to feel proud they finished a book on their own. I plan to try to read or highlight at least one wordless read for the next couple of storytimes. Flannel Board: Ten in the Bed I used a mod

Nebula Award Nominees 2017- Short Stories

This post is my progress report on my self-challenge to read all of the 2017  Nebula nominees! So far, I have completed the short story category and most of the the novelettes. I have 3 novellas and 3 novels to go. Nebula Award Nominees 2017- Short Stories What fun! I would never have read any of these stories on my own, although I expect some of these will show up in some future anthologies. I have one personal gripe, and this will come up again in another category, and that is the death of the horror genre. Because they have just killed "horror" and lumped scary stories in with science fiction and fantasy, we get stories like Sabbath Wine trying to compete with Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies and it's not fair. It really is apples and oranges. Don't believe me about horror? Go find the horror section in the Barnes and Noble. Go ahead, I'll wait.       Griping over, this selection of stories was AWESOME and heavy on the fantasy stories. Seasons and Ward

Nebula Nominees-Novella

Uh-oh! It's getting down to the wire and I have two and a half books to go. Yipe! I'm really struggling with Ninefox Gambit, my loves. It's so intense and it's so hard to read something to read text that is a block of words you recognize, but some of those words do not mean what you think they mean. Really, all of scifi has bits like that. It's just that after awhile, the reader adjusts and it lets up. This one is NOT letting up. Novellas Confession, this section was completely rigged because Every Heart a Doorway was one of my favorite books from last year. I did not know then that it was a novella, nor did I care. To be fair, I read all of the nominees and, I could cry, because some of them are SO GOOD. Runtime was everything for me. If you say science fiction story, Runtime is exactly what I think of. It's perfect. It's awesome, it  was soooooo good. I loved The Dream-Quest of Villett Boe because it featured a middle-aged woman on a quest wi