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Mark McKenna's The Word Gang Reviewed By Maria Savva of Bookpleasures.com
- By Maria Savva
- Published April 29, 2011
- Childrens & Young Adults
Maria Savva
Reviewer Maria Savva : Maria is a lawyer and writer from the UK. She has published four novels and three collections of short stories and she is currently editing her fifth novel. She is also a resident author/moderator for BestsellerBound.com. You can find out more about Maria by following on her WEBSITE.
Author: Mark McKenna
ISBN: 978-0-9831055-3-4
Publisher:
Precipitation Press
Click Here To Purchase The Word Gang
A young adult book that will delight
adults as well as teens. Mark McKenna has created a wonderful
story based on every author's and reader’s first love: the written
word. All of the characters in the novel are well developed; we
learn about their backgrounds and can sympathise with their flaws.
Even the detestable teacher, Mr. Ralston, seems to have a side to him
that we can all relate to.
After taking a year off school, without
telling her mother, Kalisha Jackson begins to feel guilty and decides
to go back to school when the new year begins. She finds
herself in Project Restart, a new type of teaching system for
students who are deemed to be failing in some way. On her first
day, she gets off to a bad start when she turns up late, and her
moody teacher, Mr. Ralston, immediately marks her out as a bad
seed.
Kalisha quickly makes friends with two fellow students in
Project Restart; BD, who lives with his alcoholic father; and
Sahmbaht, whose family fled from Cambodia for a better life in
America, but have brought their painful memories with them.
After
helping out an elderly neighbour, Kalisha is given a gift; a
dictionary. She begins to read it and starts learning new
words. When she uses one of these unknown words in class one
day, her teacher thinks she is trying to be disruptive.
Kalisha
and her new friends formulate a plan. They have had enough of
being treated as troublemakers through no fault of their own, so they
decide to learn as many new and obscure words as possible with the
intention of making a mockery of Project Restart and hopefully
destroying it.
The ensuing adventure is a fun and engaging
read; and also educational as there are many rarely used words
contained in the novel. This is the type of book that could
encourage teens and young adults to look at language in a different
way, and perhaps inspire them to learn more words or even more
languages.
The story held my interest all the way through.
The elderly neighbour, Mr. Spinoza, is a wonderfully eccentric
character, and I liked the interaction between him and
Kalisha.
There seems to be is a deeper meaning to this story;
all about how anyone can be misunderstood. For example, Kalisha
is affected by her parents' divorce. Her teacher, Jack Ralston
does not try to find out about reasons why the children in Project
Restart might be failing, but labels them as disruptive and
undisciplined; he has little patience with them. Meanwhile,
Kalisha at such a young age has been helping to keep her family
together, bringing up her two young siblings while her mother works
the night shift at a hospital to make ends meet. Kalisha also
shows her caring side when she first meets old Mr. Spinoza.
The
Word Gang is all about how misunderstandings can make problems worse,
and that it is best to try a bit harder to see the reasons behind the
way people behave before you judge them.
Mark McKenna has somehow
managed to get inside the minds of his characters and create
realistic, believable people.
A very enjoyable read, highly
recommended.