Christy Goerzen

I've read some good Orca Currents publications and I appreciate their mission to bring short, high-interest contemporary stories to below average readers. The best ones take a fairly strict set of rules on length and vocabulary and craft an interesting and well-written story in barely 100 pages (and we're talking 100 small pages with BIG print and margins). But this story about a city girl being forced to spend an eye-opening week on a farm by her self-absorbed batty mother was so . . . show more bland. And like most books in this line, it ended with Maddie learning a "lesson" (though in this book, the lesson is not shoved down your throat in an unrealistic way, and that's true of most Orca Currents books I've read). I don't think "high interest" necessarily needs to involve solving a mystery or dealing with gritty social issues like gangs or stalking (lots of books in this line do just that), but even a quiet character development story like this one needs real conflict and rising action. This one never broke the surface on anything, and I ended up feeling like nothing really happened. It was unexciting and uncomplicated and hey, maybe I'm being too hard on it for that -- maybe there are kids who want a feel-good story where they don't have to worry about anything truly bad happening (well, a cow dies and people are sad, but that's about it).

Having said all that, Goerzen writes well from a teen perspective, especially dialogue, and Maddie and her mother (who does NOT learn a lesson, even though she is perhaps the most annoying, self-involved parent I've ever seen in a novel) had definite personality. The Orca Currents line works well in school libraries and classrooms, and this could work for struggling readers who don't want TEH GRITTY. show less