Rate this book

Ten Miles Past Normal (2011)

by Frances O'Roark Dowell(Favorite Author)

3.59 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1416995854 (ISBN13: 9781416995852)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Atheneum Books for Young Readers

review 1: I liked the book Ten Miles Past Normal because I really like girl drama and high school stories. This book is one of my favorites because it was high school drama and it was a book filled with regret and alienation. This book focuses on one point of view, Janie’s. If I had to pick a favorite character aside from Janie it would be her new daring friend, Monster. I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy reading about high school stories and how some girls feel alienated because of what their parent’s work at and where they live. All in all, I really liked this book and recommend reading it. I thought that the writing was powerful and beautiful because the language used was effective. The strengths of this book are the climax because it was very strongly edited. ... moreI would put this in the intermediate library because it was very beautiful.
review 2: This book is about a 14-year-old girl who has just started high school with all this enthusiasm, only to find out how incredibly different she is, and she realizes all she wants is to be ordinary. This isn't a revolutionary premise, as most people can relate. This is middle grade, so the target audience is about 12, and I really felt like this showed through. The high school in the book isn't realistic, but it is probably how 7th and 8th graders think it is. Everything is really tame (unnecessarily). Janie lives on a small farm with her family, and it's sort of her fault, but she hates it now. That part's pretty funny. In the beginning, she goes to school with goat poop on her shoe, which stinks up the bus and makes her infamous, and this becomes the symbol of her "difference" throughout the book. Part of her problem is that she ended up in a different lunch schedule than all her middle school friends, and she can't get past the whole farm girl reputation. She eventually makes a friend in the library, but this girl is anything but ordinary. Then she and an old friend go after a cute boy in a band, and somehow she ends up learning to play bass, which also is anything but ordinary for a girl. She becomes friends with an older guy with the weird name, Monster. She and a friend get all worked up about some civil rights issue and end up getting in big trouble over it.The biggest problem I had with it was that once she decided to try to do unusual things on purpose, there tended to be nothing but good consequences (or if there were bad ones, too, they ended up not mattering). This just isn't realistic at all. If she really were the outcast she thought she was, she could have picked up the bass and it wouldn't have made her friends--it would have done absolutely nothing (oh, except maybe give the mean kids one more thing to tease her about). Maybe some people think it's okay to lie to preteens ("it's okay to be different--just be yourself and everyone will love you!!"), but I don't like that. You can get the message across in a more realistic way. Of course it's okay to choose to be different, but there will be consequences, and learning to navigate those consequences is what you need to do. less

Download links for: Ten Miles Past Normal

Advertising