Marty Chan

Literary Merit: Poor
Characterization: Poor
Recommended: No
Reading Level: High School
I could not follow this book or manage to establish a good idea of who was who among the many rotating characters and names. This is the second book in an expected trilogy but the third was never published despite the preview in the back. I have not read the first and I think that greatly contributed to my confusion. I felt thrown in to the middle of a plot and never got much of an explanation of what I had missed before this point. Similarly, the characters were named but rarely described and there were many of them so I couldn't keep track of who was who or what their relationships were to one another. The premise of alternate universe american history in the age of Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla is intriguing but never fully realized. I couldn't get the plot or characters organized enough to understand and enjoy the book.… (más)

Marty is a 10-year old Chinese boy in a small town in Alberta. In fact, he is the only Chinese boy in town. Because of this (and it doesn't help that his mother picks out his clothes!), he gets picked on. He does have one friend, a French boy, Remi (but because Remi is in the French class and Marty in the English class, no one can know they are friends). When Remi and Marty discover some graffiti on the school shed, they are initially accused of spraying it themselves! They decide they must find out who did it...

This is a kids' book and I really enjoyed it. There is a lot of humour going on in the book, and Marty Chan does such a good job getting inside kids' heads, I think. It seemed like it, anyway. Obviously, being a kids' book, it was fairly simple, but it was just a really fun book!… (más)