Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Attack of Jabba the Puppett

Surprise Attack of Jabba the Puppett: An Origami Yoda Book Tom Angleberger

The Fun Time Menace has fully descended on McQuarrie Middle School. All electives have been cancelled and the kids are instead being forced to watch horrible videos (featuring rapping calculators) teach them how to do basic math they already understand.

A Rebel Alliance is needed.

There are a ton of new origami Star Wars characters introduced in this one as Tommy & Co. recruit members to their cause to get rid of FunTime. They’re smart about it--they use math to know how to throw the test to show that FunTime wasn’t effective--if X number of kids fail, then they can get rid of it for next year. They also find ways to work some of their missing electives back in.

The problem is that even though the kids are actually being rather reasonable, Principal Rabbski’s not really listening to them, and they’ll need help from some very unexpected places to get their point across.

I really like the turn the series took. It’s about a much bigger issue than just one student or one piece of maybe magical origami. It’s an entire school movement, and it tackles so many issues we face in education today-- the FunTime menace isn’t real, but it is. (*cough* AR *cough*) We put so much emphasis on test scores, that’s we’ve opened a market for people to cash in without any real benefit to the schools and students and this book really looks at this, in a hilarious manner.

I also really liked how Dwight chose each character for the different kids in the alliance. Much like he showed with the original Origami Yoda, Dwight notices things about people and knows how to nudge them in the right directions.


Book Provided by... my local library

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