This is the quirkiest, most honest, weirdest, best book EVER! I really loved it. This morning I pushed it on two students: one a boy, who refused to take it because of the pink cover, and one a girl, who buckled under my insistence. She’ll thank me, I promise.
Most contemporary fiction — adult and YA alike — tidily solves life’s issues in 250 pages or fewer. But How to Say Goodbye in Robot isn’t “tidy” at all. Beatrice and Jacob, the main characters, have all kinds of human, heartbreaking problems: loneliness, boredom, death, social disillusionment. The author, Standiford, doesn’t even pretend that Beatrice and Jacob will ever be perfectly happy or shed all their problems. She’s much too realistic and honest for that. Instead, she examines the way these kids find joy and meaning in an imperfect world: through late-night radio, through art, through carnival rides, through friendship.
At school, people call Jacob “Ghost Boy.” He haunts the hallways like a spectre and barely ever talks to anyone. His past and present are thick with tragedy. But when Beatrice, “Robot Girl” arrives Senior Year, things take an unexpected turn. Together, the pair searches for Jacob’s long-lost twin brother and makes tentative plans for life after high school. But is it safe for Beatrice to befriend such a sad boy? Will she be sucked into Jacob’s “ghostly” world?
I’m telling you. Read this book. You’ll love it. It’s one of my all-time favorites, at least for now:) (Grade 8 and up, I’d say.)
I know what you’re thinking. Hoot? Are you serious? That book is lik
e seven years old! Ms. Ryan is just getting around to reading it? And my answer, sadly, is yes; after receiving dozens of recommendations, I finally listened to Hoot this weekend, on CD, in my car. Last spring, I read Scat, which was brand new at the time. That’s right, I didn’t let the dust settle on that one.
There is so much going on in this book that it’s hard to summarize cleverly and succinctly. So, for this one, I’m going to try a list of facts to see if I can convey the flavor of this intriguing novel:
Okay, to really get into this book, you’d better like puzzles, mysteries, and math (well, at least a little bit of math). Sophie, Rebecca, and Margaret are seventh-graders at an all-girls Catholic school in New York City. They’re into dances, music, and books. They’re just discovering that boys aren’t always gross and weird (just most of the time). They think this is going to be just another ordinary school year with breakfast at Perkatory and after-school homework sessions at Sophie’s apartment. But then, a lot of stuff happens. For one thing, there’s this new girl Leigh Ann, who looks like a Seventeen model. That’s pretty annoying, especially since the boy Sophie likes seems to get all silly and red whenever Leigh Ann is around. But the main action of the novel surrounds a ring — a really old, really valuable ring that is supposedly hidden somewhere in the church across from school. Soon, the girls are decoding secret messages, digging through moldy books in the library storeroom, breaking into to secret passageways, and hiding under tables from priests! This is definitely NOT your typical middle school mystery. If you read and liked The Puzzling World of Winston Breen, you might like The Red Blazer Girls, which also provides puzzles for readers to solve along the way. If only a fun, exciting mystery would drop into my lap in the middle of a boring Tuesday afternoon.
