{"id":2691,"date":"2006-12-18T21:39:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-18T21:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2691"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:26:01","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:26:01","slug":"korman-rocks-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2691","title":{"rendered":"Korman Rocks On"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This book is a 2006 <a href=\"http:\/\/dadtalk.typepad.com\/cybils\/2006\/10\/young_adult_nov.html\" target=\"_blank\">Cybil Award<\/a> Nominee for YA Fiction.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Another great band book, this fast-paced novel is actually also about destiny &#8212; and how often our parents really have nothing to do with ours. Leo Caraway is a straight-laced guy who is pretty sure that he&#8217;s got some wicked weirdness within him due to the fact that his former Wall Street guru Dad isn&#8217;t his biological father. Every time he&#8217;s tempted to act outside the code of Young Republican Buttoned Down Gentleman, he squelches what he calls that McMurphy gene bequeathed to him by one Marion X. McMurphy, the sperm-donor guy his mother won&#8217;t talk about. (And please don&#8217;t get her started &#8212; she gets upset and starts doing puzzles on every horizontal surface. <em>EVERY <\/em>horizontal surface.)<\/p>\n<p>Leo is shocked out of his socks when he discovers his Goth-girl best friend Melinda is grooving on the punk music of the band <em>Purge, <\/em>whose lead, one King Maggot, is really named&#8230; Marion Xavier McMurphy. Leo is freaked &#8212; and feels he <em>is <\/em>a freak &#8212; as he&#8217;s known all along. How could he not be? He got it from that McMurphy gene. <img decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"10\" src=\"http:\/\/gordonkorman.com\/borntorock.gif\" align=\"left\" \/><\/p>\n<p>After losing out at his chance to go to Harvard when a scholarship falls through due to a misunderstanding of sorts, Leo determines that he&#8217;s going to find his old man and milk him of some of his megabucks. After all, the leader of the punk band, <em>Purge<\/em>, is part of the angriest band in America &#8212; and one of the richest. Leo&#8217;s family, after all, so he knows he can pull it off &#8212; meet the guy, get the money, and blow off back to his Young Republican lifestyle.<\/p>\n<p>So, what happens when Leo gets the roadie gig &#8212; then finds out that it&#8217;s not that easy blowing King off?<\/p>\n<p>In that great <a href=\"http:\/\/gordonkorman.com\/borntorock.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Gordon Korman<\/a> tradition, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.booksense.com\/product\/info.jsp?affiliateId=ReadersResponse&amp;isbn=0786809205\" target=\"_blank\">Born to Rock<\/a> is truly hilarious with the best first three pages of a novel that I&#8217;ve read in ages (<i>&#8220;The thing about a cavity search is this. It has nothing to do with a dentist. If only it did.&#8221;<\/i>), a fast-paced style, great voice and hilarious character quirks like the puzzle-playing Mom. Enjoyable on every level and much reccomended, even if you&#8217;re not a punk person and know nothing about 80&#8217;s bands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This book is a 2006 Cybil Award Nominee for YA Fiction. Another great band book, this fast-paced novel is actually also about destiny &#8212;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-2691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3845,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2691\/revisions\/3845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}