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nancy@nancykeane.com
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Gardner,
Graham
INVENTING ELLIOT
New York : Dial Books, 2004.
IL YA
ISBN 0803729642
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Click on the book to read Amazon reviews
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“The
point of control is to control. The point of having power is to have power.
The point of using terror is to use terror.” (From George Orwell's 1984)
Every day at school, Elliot is subjected to daily beatings and bullying.
At home Elliot’s mom works at two jobs everyday and his father never really
recovered from the accident that left him a physical and emotional invalid.
Then Elliot gets a chance to start all over in a new town at a new school
Holminster High. Even though Elliot will be changing schools in the
middle of the year, he is determined to not draw any unwanted attention,
to reinvent himself. He spends all his savings to buy new clothes and get
a stylish haircut. Then Elliot goes to the swim team tryouts and ends up
on the team. Just when Elliot begins to think he has sucessfully blended
in at Holminster, a group known as the Guardians recruits him to join.
The Guardians are obsessed with Orwell's 1984, and they rule over the school,
deciding which students gets spared and which get punished each semester.
Operating in secret, the Guardians don’t actually participate in the punishments,
they appoint others to do the dirty work. Just as Elliot is being recruited
into the Guardians, he makes friends with social outcast Ben, and he begins
to fall in love with a very outspoken young girl named Louise. The Guardians
have decided that they will accept Elliot if he makes the choice of which
student will get punished by another and by what method. Having once been
bullied, Elliot agonizes over the decision whether to be accepted
in his new school, or to not accept the way of the Guardians. (Compare
this to The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier) (Shawn Crosby, scrosby@kcls.org,
Des Moines Library, Des Moines, WA) |
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SUBJECTS:
Bullies -- Fiction.
High schools -- Fiction.
Schools -- Fiction.
Family problems -- Fiction.
Self-realization -- Fiction. |
© 
Permission is granted for the
noncommercial duplication and use of this resource, provided it is substantially
unchanged from its present form and appropriate credit is given.
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