Stuff We All Get

November 15, 2011
Grades 6-9 Denman's entry in the Orca Currents series is a gentle, thought-provoking story on the fickle nature of fame. Fifteen-year-old Zack is having trouble making friends at his new school. An embarrassing incident makes him the butt of jokes, and he gets suspended for fighting. After the boredom of doing endless chores, Zack takes his mom up on the offer to go geocaching, a hide-and-seek game using GPS coordinates. He finds a CD with the word Famous written on it, and the songs speak to his loneliness and frustration. Music is important to Zack because of his sound-color synesthesia (he sees colors when he hears music), and he becomes obsessed with the girl singing on the CD. He finds her working in a nearby caf' and offers to help promote her music, but readers will realize before he does that she is unworthy of his adulation. Though a quick, low-tension read, Denman's story avoids simplified characters, creating a surprisingly layered treatment of media obsession. Pair this with R. J. Anderson's Ultraviolet, reviewed below, for another novel that explores synesthesia.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2012
Geocaching becomes a metaphor for finding one's way in this slight but entertaining novel. Zack and his single mom move too often for him to make friends. When he takes up geocaching, Zack--who has sound-color synesthesia--finds more than just a box of "swag." The themes and morals are a little too obvious, but Zack's story is engaging nonetheless.

(Copyright 2012 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)