[Darren]

Two more new ones for me and one re-read in the latest three books I've read.

The Chicken Doesn't Skate

A nice combo of sports story mixed with regular school life/science fair project. Took a little from Toilet Paper Tigers with it's template, though a sport I much prefer in hockey over baseball. In TPT, each chapter focused on a different player, while with Chicken each one was from the viewpoint of a different character in the story. Both books had a mascot or totem that improved the player's abilities or gave them extra motivation. Whether it was the chicken here or the lepton in TPT. You could even go back to the first Bruno and Boots and see that in the section where the opposing team's cat mascot was stolen to give them an edge in the game. Reading this brought back a fun hockey memory for me. A friend of mine was in goal for the opposing team and they were winning, but I broke his shutout with one second left in the game. Some 37 years later, I still bug him about it.

Also I see the NYU screenwriting course paid off here.

Favourite Line: "I know what they could serve at the victory banquet!"
Conceptual Continuity: Winnipeg, elephantiasis.

NB: The day I finished reading this I made chicken salad sandwiches for supper.

Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

Same audience target as Why Did The Underwear Cross The Road?, I did find this one a little more fun. Also taught an important lesson.
Favourite Line: "I don't think seventy-five cents a week will buy much in the year 2018."
Conceptual Continuity: Nodrog.

6th Grade Nickname Game

This was an enjoyable re-read. Loved the spiking of the clipboard. I think slapstick is kind of difficult to pull off through the written word, but GK does it so well (like the clown pants scene in The Twinkie Squad). I dug the NYC subway map skirt as a friend I met up with on our latest trip gave me a map to take home to put with our various travel tchotchkes (he worked security on the subway). One typo I noticed in this book (and there were two like this in A Semester In The Life... both of them recent purchases) was "suuk" for "sunk" (p.25). The three typos seemed to me to be more like some kind of OCR problem. I had to power through this one after a hand injury at work that landed me in the ER (karma for the chicken salad?).

Favourite Line: "If there's one thing that never happens enough, it's reading for the plain fun of it."
Conceptual Continuity: Gunhold

Two questions arose from these books for me:
1) The blurb at the back of Chicken said you did play hockey. What age did you play until and what position, Gord?
2) It seems you've had a gym coach teach other subjects more than once. Is this in reference to the gym teacher who gave you the assignment that started your writing career?

Wow, I could go for a chicken salad sandwich just about now!

Your questions:

1) I played on a house league team until I turned 13, at which age I decided that the other guy could have the puck so long as I didn't get my caboose knocked off. I was a right winger, and I had some glory days, but they were very few and far between.

2) One gym coach, Mr. Hamilton, grade 7. He's the one who thought we could all write novels. Who knew?       --GK--