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Searching... Salem Main Library | J Paulsen, G. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
You ever open your locker and find that some joker has left something really weird inside? Seventh-grader Dorso Clayman opens his locker door to find a dead body. Thirty seconds later it disappears. It's not the first bizarre thing that has appeared in his locker and then vanished. Something's going on. Somebody has decided to make Dorso and his buddy Frank the target of some strange techno-practical jokes. The ultimate gamesters have hacked into the time line, and things from the past are appearing in the present. Soon, the jokes aren't funny anymore--they're dangerous. Dorso and Frank have got to beat the time hackers at their own game by breaking the code, before they get lost in the past themselves. From the Hardcover edition.
Author Notes
Gary Paulsen was born on May 17, 1939 in Minnesota. He was working as a satellite technician for an aerospace firm in California when he realized he wanted to be a writer. He left his job and spent the next year in Hollywood as a magazine proofreader. His first book, Special War, was published in 1966. He has written more than 175 books for young adults including Brian's Winter, Winterkill, Harris and Me, Woodsong, Winterdance, The Transall Saga, Soldier's Heart, This Side of Wild, and Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books. Hatchet, Dogsong, and The Winter Room are Newbery Honor Books. He was the recipient of the 1997 Margaret A. Edwards Award for his lifetime achievement in writing for young adults.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-7-Meet Dorso Clayman, middle schooler. Ever since he brought in his school laptop for repairs, things have gotten unpredictable. In his world, folks have been able to alter time, so walking briefly beside General Custer while moving between classes isn't uncommon. However, having your locker temporarily full of dead bodies is unusual. While most of his friends are used to these time oddities, Dorso becomes aware that when he experiences them the reality level is greater. Custer, for example, seems to notice him, something supposedly impossible according to the revised law of time. His buddy Frank, who is obsessed with outfoxing the limitations on seeing things such as unclothed females, teams up with him to play detective. They discover someone inserted a new chip in the laptop when it was repaired that allows them to go back to historical events and be part of them. There are others with the same chip, playing a dangerous game of chicken in terms of altering history. When the boys encounter the chip maker, he enlists their aid in retrieving the game players' laptops. Nick Podehl perfectly voices all the characters, and tween boys will be drawn into the tale.-John R. Clark, Hartland Public Library, ME (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Paulsen's futuristic novel starts with a bang, as Dorso Clayman discovers a medical cadaver in his school locker ("It was an old cadaver. Runny"). Readers quickly learn that the discovery of a "hologram projector chip" has led to "time projection": anyone with a laptop could now "pull images from the past and project them anywhere." Yet this technology is supposedly governed by the "paradox of time"; individuals can view the past but cannot physically be transported back in time so as to be able to alter history. Dorso is puzzled by a string of computer-generated pranks (in addition to the cadaver, he's been visited by holograms of dead frogs, lab rats and rotting earthworms). But the 12-year-old is mystified when he finds himself face-to-face with Custer, Beethoven and then a woolly mammoth-which was most definitely not a hologram. He and his friend Frank suspect that someone has found a way around the time paradox and that Dorso's laptop is connected to the perpetrator's scheme. As they're transported to various episodes in history (including the Battle of Gettysburg and the Crusades), the duo learns that time hackers are playing a game that might destroy the universe. Readers will be sucked into Paulsen's clever plotting, despite some silly, repetitive bits involving Dorso's younger sister's dress-up games with their cat, and Frank's obsession with conjuring up a naked Helen of Troy. This inventively twisted cyberspace caper may well lure kids more accustomed to surfing the Web than turning pages. Ages 10-up. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
If time travel is impossible, how do Dorso and Frank literally bump into a woolly mammoth? Paulsen's new book is a lively romp through colliding timelines, with just enough tension about saving time from destruction to keep the story moving. The slightly bland ending is made up for by the narrative's rapid pace and verbal slapstick. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
In an unidentified future time when laptops can be rolled up and gold is worth ten times what it is today, seventh-grader Dorso and best friend Frank find themselves in the middle of a time-travel game that escalates from smelly dead things appearing in Dorso's locker to involuntary transportation to dangerous moments in history. Should they inform the authorities or try to stop the perpetrators themselves? From the attention-grabbing opening scene through the satisfying ending in which middle-school boys do, indeed, save the world (with considerable help from a stereotypical 1990s computer geek), Paulsen again demonstrates his talent for constructing fast-paced adventure, full of boy humor involving bathroom jokes and looking for pictures of naked women. Light and entertaining, this should appeal to reluctant readers as well as confirmed Paulsen fans. (Fiction. 9-12) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 5-8. Seventh-grader Dorso Clayman has a problem in his futurist world. Every time he opens his locker, he finds something from another time or place. He's determined to find out who is messing with the time continuum before a woolly mammoth tramples him, he's shot with an arrow at Wounded Knee, or, worse, the time fiddlers destroy the world. Luckily, his best friend, Frank (who uses conventional time-travel opportunities to spy out naked women from history), is on his side, and together they can set things right. Paulsen writes with his usual skill, creating believable characters and moving the action along at a fairly fast pace, but the spare story feels as if it should have been expanded into a longer novel, and explanations of the science concepts involved seem complicated for the target audience. Still, this has some fun moments. Try it with rowdy, adventure-loving readers and science-minded kids. It's hard to tell which audience will be the most receptive. --Cindy Welch Copyright 2005 Booklist