reply
@Jade—You’ll have to ask Kaden about the advanced equations behind flattening a parabola for the perfect football spiral. That math is way over my head!
@Asher—As it happens, I have a copy of an annotated bibliography book called Twins in Children’s and Adolescent Literature in which the author—and I’m absolutely not making up that her name is Dee Storey—gives some information on (and a glowing review of) Our Man Weston. The “Weston” section also includes some behind-the-scenes notes from GRK about why he chose to make Tom and Sidney twins (humor!) and the extent of his firsthand knowledge of twins (none whatsoever!). Sadly, the book is too old to include any later Kormanian twins and I can’t think of any that fulfill your call for twin frenemies. I know we saw the LaPaz triplets in Don’t Care High, but they didn’t squabble with each other. I recall a couple of heated sibling rivalries before Stuart and Sarah’s, maybe the most memorable being Will and Lyssa Greenfield in the ISLAND trilogy. When brothers and sisters go to war in a Korman story, they’re not messing around!
@Neel—I remember being around your age and realizing that, every once in a while, a book would come along that was so good it was worth being tired the next day to stay up and read “just one more chapter.”
——–
Some thoughts on Chapter 8 (Cleo):
> Cleo’s jibe about Andromedon reminds me just a bit of Simon’s reaction to The Legend of the Glass Caves in Son of Interflux, and makes me think GRK likes to subtly dis “sword and sorcery” fantasy. (Or maybe I just think all high fantasy text sounds like a parody.)
> “His confused expression morphs into one of pure delight. ‘You’re asking me to do you a favor.'”—(Yash’s response when Cleo asks him to be in the play)—Hahahaha! @Shaleen—you called it! So many of GRK’s stories have that sort of cascade moment when you’re about to be swept along on a wild ride of interconnecting storylines.
> Whoa! Not only are most of the P-E-E students helping out Yash with his football drills, but the investigative journalism class is about to add Cleo to the ranks? This is one happening summer school!