#119 - Darth Paper Strikes Back: A book review - September 30, 2012

Sunday.

Overslept a bit this morning, but thankfully the kids all had clean Sunday-appropriate clothes.  We left on time, and I was able to steal close to an hour during Primary to organize the choir folders and music.  There was a baptism at the same time as choir and in the same room, so I cancelled choir and we went home. 

Lunch, a nap, some relaxing.  Katrina’s mom is trying to come out to spend Christmas with us, and we talked with her on Google video chat for a while.  Aria had the computer in her room, and we sat on her bed and talked.  It would be nice for her to come visit.  No reason not to at all.  Note to self: the count down clock is down to about 10 weeks!  We have work to do!

I put up a few more blog posts, and stayed up (again) to watch the Giants get beaten by the Eagles.  Just barely, and they beat themselves (a penalty at the end messed up the game-winning field goal try).  But a loss nonetheless. 

Now it is time to add a belated book review: Darth Paper Strikes Back.  This is book 2 in the Origami Yoda series.  I will assume that my readers have never heard of Origami Yoda.  This series is hugely popular with 10 year-old or so boys.  I took Darth Paper on my boy scout campout last weekend, and they all had either read it or knew about it.  The premise is clever: there is a boy who is socially inept at a junior high.  He creates a simple origami finger puppet of Yoda.  When his friends need an answer to a tough life question (as in, “I splashed a little water on my pants in the bathroom.  Now it looks like I wet my pants, and the bell is about to ring!  What do I do??!?!?”) origami Yoda provides a cryptic answer.  The kids follows Yoda’s advice and things turn out well.  (The kids gets the rest of his pants wet and walks to class.  No big deal.  The kid has wet pants.  But nobody can accuse him of wetting his pants.)

The trouble is that teachers see the Yoda thing as disruptive, and Yoda makes a prediction at the beginning of this book that another kid interprets as a threat.  The school has a zero-tolerance policy, and the principal removes him from school and recommends he be sent to the remedial school.  Meanwhile, his mom cuts off all communication with his friends – no phone, no visits, no email, nothing. 

The book is ostensibly written by Origami Yoda’s creator’s friend, Tommy.  And Tommy’s friends contribute chapters as well.  His buddy Kellen adds doodles to the book, and Tommy’s nemesis Harvey also writes rebuttals to each chapter.  Each chapter recounts an incident that Origami Yoda was involved in and how it turned out. 

The book is clever and funny.  Well about a 4-hour reading time.  Thankfully, the book is mostly clear of fart jokes and things, and deals more with interhuman interaction (among the boys and between the boys and girls) and the hilarity of being very uncertain of oneself than it does trying to put out one-liners.  For those reasons, it’s worth a read.  The third book, The Fortune Wookie, is out in hardback now.

A truly gorgeous day today.

This picture is on its side.