The Great Typo Hunt (Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson)


The Plot
Jeff Deck, feeling motivated by his recent college reunion to get out and do something, embarks on a months long journey across the country to correct ‘typos’: errors in punctuation, spelling and grammatical style which plague our signs, pamphlets and menus. The road trip ends up taking a turn he never saw coming.

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Geek Chic: The Zoey Zone by Margie Palatini: C

From the back cover:
MEET ZOEY
Age: Eleven. Well, almost eleven. Backspace. Halfway to eleven.
Factoid: 198 days to sixth grade.
Problem: Coolability (see glossary inside).
Connect the dots: A bad hair situation… Growing earlobes…

WANTED:
1. A fairy godmother.
2. A molto chic makeover [molto = very in Italian].
3. A seat at the primo lunch table. [Primo is also Italian. It means best.]

THE SOLUTION:
Tune in!
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The Sharing Knife: Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold: B-

From the front flap:
In a world where malices—remnants of ancient magic—can erupt with life-destroying power, only soldier-sorcerer Lakewalkers have mastered the ability to kill them. But Lakewalkers keep their uncanny secrets and themselves from the farmers they protect, so when patroller Dag Redwing Hickory rescued farmer girl Fawn Bluefield, neither expected to fall in love, join their lives in marriage, or defy both their kin to seek new solutions to the perilous split between their peoples.

Fawn and Dag see that their world is changing, and the traditional Lakewalker practices cannot hold every malice at bay forever. Yet for all the customs that the couple has challenged thus far, they will soon be confronted by a crisis exceeding their worst imaginings, one that threatens their Lakewalker and farmer followers alike. Now the pair must answer in earnest the question they’ve grappled with since they killed their first malice together: when the old traditions fail disastrously, can their untried new ways stand against their world’s deadliest foe?
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J’s Take on Geek Chic: The Zoey Zone

A very short book! Which is a nice change, since I was slogging through some 600 page books recently.

The basic premise? Zoey is trying to attract the attention of a fairy godmother so she can become cool before sixth grade. Because if you’re not cool before sixth grade, then you won’t be cool in sixth grade.

The format is different. There’s some cartoons and pictures. And sometimes the font is just crazy and all over the place. And in some cases, it’s even in screenplay format. It does really give you the sense that a nearly-11-year-old wrote it. To some extent, annoyingly so!
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Geek Chic: The Zoey Zone (Margie Palatini)


The Plot
Zoey Zinevitch is an almost eleven year-old fifth grader who suffers from the condition of being not cool. She isn’t quite sure why, as she also isn’t entirely sure what makes one cool in the first place — she just knows that whatever it is, she doesn’t have it. But she has 186 days left to become cool before the 6th grade, or she knows she’ll never manage it in her life.
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