Absolutely Normal Chaos

Another Creech. It's not the world's greatest title, I have to say, but it was a fun read. The main character is a bit slow-- I mean, she's a bright girl, Mary Lou, but it's one of those books where the reader feels like she knows more than the main character, and not in a good way like in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, where the main character is autistic and has difficulty understanding the relationships around him.

So in Walk Two Moons, Sal starts at a new school where all of the students have been required to keep a journal for the summer, and her the teacher reads excerpts from some of the journals in class, much to the students' chagrin. Absolutely Normal is one of the other students' summer journals. It's really cool because there are a couple of places where Mary Lou has written exactly what the teacher reads out loud in Walk Two Moons.

It makes me very curious about Creech's writing process, but I don't want to read her interviews until I've read all of the books because I detest the spoilers.

I like to do this thing when I get a new book where flip the book open to a random page, and I read a line, knowing when I read it that it doesn't mean anything to me. Then when I get to that line in the book later, I feel as if I'm having deja vu-- except this time I'm totally interested in the line. So, that's how reading Absolutely Normal felt a little bit.

Oh, and also, Mary Lou is reading The Odyssey for her summer reading, so she summarizes it and compares the characters to some of the people she knows. I think it's a great way to tantalize young readers into reading the classics, and now I feel that I really should read that book too, since I somehow managed to get through high school and two college degrees without it. I do know the gist of it. Sheesh.

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