Boom!

Mark Haddon is the author of The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Nighttime.  I loved this book.  I thoroughly enjoyed the insight into the mind of an autistic teenager.  The quirkiness of the main character coupled with the ensuing mystery of the novel made for a fabulous read.

I found Boom! at the Scholastic Book Fair.  The catchy title and bright orange cover is what first caught my eye, but upon seeing the author's name, I knew it was a must read!  However, I was deeply disappointed.  The author's many, many references to items in British vernacular became overbearing.  I've read a great many books sent to England, and consider myself to be a budding Anglophile, but I had to look up so many of the words, that reading this book became a chore.  I cannot imagine many of my students taking the same care I took, thus leaving many of them misunderstanding the jokes or the point of a particular passage.


Another frustration is that there is truly no indication what the book is to be about.  About mid way through the book you learn that you're dealing with teachers who are actually aliens.  Novel idea ;o).  The book is basically two boys' quest to prove the truth, a typical good versus evil story.  However, it took so long for me to get to the point where I understood what was going on, I wasn't interested any longer.

While Boom! is not the original title of the novel, it is certainly a better selling point than Gridzbi Spudvetch was.  I know that I'll have a hard time selling this book to my students... which is unfortunate, because if anything it shows just how varied the English language is!