{"id":702,"date":"2006-02-23T15:56:13","date_gmt":"2006-02-23T20:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/?p=702"},"modified":"2006-03-21T19:20:53","modified_gmt":"2006-03-22T00:20:53","slug":"the-view-from-saturday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2006\/02\/23\/the-view-from-saturday\/","title":{"rendered":"The View from Saturday"},"content":{"rendered":"

1997 Newbery Medal Winner: The View from Saturday, by E. L. Konigsburg<\/p>\n\nThe Plot<\/b>
\nA team of 4 6th graders has had surprising success in the region’s Academic Quiz Bowl tournament. The four of them were actually a group prior to being assigned to the team by their teacher, but she didn’t know that, and they didn’t tell her. The book is more a series of interconnected short stories than one overarching plot.<\/p>\n

My Thoughts<\/b>
\nMuch like The Big Four and Borders of Infinity, the stories in this book, while interconnected and involving many of the same characters, have been loosely tied together by an extra plot of surpassing thinness. In this case, the plot is an Academic Bowl match, at which all of the student protagonists are competing. As they answer questions, we delve more deeply into stories that explain why they know that particular bit of information.<\/p>\n

As a device to thread the book together, it was a bit weak, but it worked well enough. The layers of ties between the characters was also interesting, and the slow revelation of the connections was well done. There was always time between one tidbit of information and the next so that each could be appreciated; there was no point at which I felt ‘augh, infodump’. And, upon reflection, almost all of the connections were pretty believable, though I had my doubts about them in the beginning. Explanations were provided for the questionable bits.<\/p>\n

Since I feel that there aren’t enough books that focus positively on children who’re gifted academically, I have to say I wasn’t displeased to find this one. And, in spite of the fact that several of the children had personalities I found annoying, I can’t fault the book for that, because quite often people are<\/i> annoying. It’s unrealistic to expect that I’ll like all the characters in every book. <\/p>\n

I do have one reservation though: the speech pattern of Nadia, the only female member of the foursome. She spoke like Data, never using a contraction, and as a result, I found her conversation unnatural. Native speakers of American English use contractions. To not do so comes off as stilted and unreal. The fact that the most poorly written member of the group was also the only girl was especially irksome, and keeps me from being able to give the book a higher recommendation.\n<\/pracut>\n

In Short<\/b>
\nQuite a good read, especially for those of us who enjoy reading about gifted and talented children when they actually get to be gifted and talented instead of cast in a stereotypical nerd supporting role and looked down upon by the others. A poor choice in the speech pattern of one of the characters prevents this from being what I would consider an excellent book, but it’s still above average. 8\/10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1997 Newbery Medal Winner: The View from Saturday, by E. L. Konigsburg The Plot A team of 4 6th graders has had surprising success in the region’s Academic Quiz Bowl tournament. The four of them were actually a group prior to being assigned to the team by their teacher, but she didn’t know that, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}