Is it me?

The first thing I noticed about Nancy Farmer's The House of the Scorpion was that it had three medals on the cover (National Book Award Winner, Newbery Honor Book, Michael I Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature). I thought, "well all these people can't be wrong...must be a pretty good book."

But I have to admit I had a lot of trouble getting into this book.  First of all the country is called Opium and it is clearly a drug operation-which you don't typically find in a young adult novel.  The main character Matt appears to be a normal boy but he isn't-turns out he's a clone.  You would think that if a society was advanced enough to clone humans successfully they would be tolerant of the clones.  Instead the clones are treated as second class citizens, if they're lucky-many clones have a worse fate in store.

The world of the Alacrán Estate is masterfully created and El Patrón is a fascinating hero/villain (yes, I meant hero/villain-read the book you'll see exactly what I mean).  Farmer gives away just enough to allow the reader to figure out what's really happening in the story-she doesn't spell it out.  I love that she set the book on an Opium farm and made the central character heir to a drug empire.  But I can't say I loved the book.

Even the tagline is great "Matteo Alacrán was not born; he was harvested."  That line draws me in, but I left the book thinking, "hmm that was just ok."  But then I look back at the three medals on the cover and think, "it must be me."

Thinking something different....that's kids stuff

PS To be clear I think The House of the Scorpion absolutely deserves every one of those medals and I have students in mind who I think would love this book and I will definitely recommend it to them.  It just didn't suit my tastes.