About book Jolted: Newton Starker's Rules For Survival (2000)
Jolted: Newton Starker's Rules for Survival is a book about a boy named Newton who lives by the rules he made so he wouldn’t die by getting hit by lightning as most Starkers have. When he sees Jerry Potts Academy for Higher Learning and Survival, he decides that he has to go there, but when he actually does, he has a lot of problems. For one thing, on his first day of school, his kilt (part of his uniform) drops in front of his classmates, which he blames on another student, Violet Quan. Despite this, he manages to make a friend out of Jacob, a fellow ninth grader who wants to be an author, and he also gets a pet pig named Josephine. I found that Jolted was hard to get into. It took me awhile to read- too long for such a small book. I procrastinated for ages until I finally made myself sit down and read it. Although it was hard to get into, I would still describe the author, Arthur Slade, as a good writer. I thought that Arthur excelled at descriptions and dialogue. I believe that all the characters did not do anything that was extremely out of character, so good for you Mr. Slade. The idea of this book is an interesting concept. Having a hereditary “curse” that dooms you to death via lightning certainly isn’t boring. However intriguing the idea seemed at first, somehow this book manages to be boring and quite easy to be put down. Jolted had a unique chapter format. None of the chapters were numbered and they had various lengths. Thinking back on it, the chapters made the novel seem choppy. Some chapters were told in different perspectives. For example, one chapter was in point of view of a French chef and another was just a list of facts about Violet Quan, who also was Newton’s love interest. Speaking of Newton and Violet’s romance, I found it was cliche. I saw it coming from the moment we met Violet. Not that I didn’t enjoy this plot line, I just would have liked it better if it hadn’t been so predictable. Despite all of these complaints, I did enjoy the book enough to give it three stars opposed to one or two, but I didn’t like it enough to give it four or five stars.Note: this review was originally written for a school project. " Jolted " is about a boy names Newton Starker. Everyone in his family who had Starker boold (including his mother) had dies from a lightning strike, except for Newton and his great-grandmother Enid. Newton goes to Jerry Potts Academy, which is a school for survival. He becomes friends with a boy named Jacob, and enemies with a girl named Violet. In this story, his main goals is to have his name in the Hall of Heroes for becoming first to find the talisman in the Expedition, and to find a way to stay safe from lightning strikes.I picked up this book because I hadn't finished it when it was in Silverbirch a few years ago and I wanted to do so now.I finished this book because I wanted to see if Newton would die of not.I would recommend this book to anyone who likes books about spectacular happenings ( Newton's whole family being struck by lightning ).
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it was an okay book not a great layout and was hard to follow with a bad story line.
—Ta1
