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!
Continue reading “Geek Chic: The Zoey Zone by Margie Palatini: C”
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!
Continue reading “J’s Take on Geek Chic: The Zoey Zone”
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.
Continue reading “Geek Chic: The Zoey Zone (Margie Palatini)”
This book is the first in a series by R. L. LaFevers. It’s 1906, London, and Theodosia lives mostly in a museum that her father is a curator of. Her mother goes to Egypt often to hunt for archeological finds. Theodosia can sense all the curses on the stuff her mother brings back and other stuff in the museum. And she’s taught herself how to deal with the curses and remove them. Mostly. And she gets caught up in a web of secret conspirators and blah blah blah.
Interestingly, when I read that she was the daughter of the museum’s curator, I thought that meant her mother was curator. I’m not sure why I thought that, but I was definitely surprised when it turned out to be her father. I shouldn’t have been. I knew it was 1906.
This book pretty quickly lost my interest. Theodosia was sneaking around the museum and I didn’t care. It’s not that I don’t like her. I do rather like her. It was more interesting when she was interacting with people. Except even that didn’t help after a certain point.
Continue reading “J’s Take on Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos”
The Plot
Theodosia Throckmorton spends most of her days at London’s Museum of Legends and Antiquities, where her father is the head curator. In her time there, she’s discovered she has a talent which allows her to see the curses placed on the artifacts that arrive at the museum. Safely dispelling these threats consumes much of her time. When her mother returns from Egypt with an exceedingly curse laden shipment of newly discovered Egyptian items she finds out there are quite a few people with interest in these ancient magics and not all of them are nice.
Continue reading “Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos (R.L. LaFevers)”
