Ungifted

Great book. Enthralling. Good character development.

I found this book to be both amusing and touching, quite a feat for a middle grade book. Donovan is a very likeable kid who has a tendency to act first and think later, which gets him into trouble in the very first chapter. He follows one of his strange brainstorms and ends up in the district superintendent's office in major trouble. But thanks to a paperwork mishap he instead ends up at the school for gifted students. He and his classmates as well as the teachers quickly realize that while he has talents, they are not the academic type. It was interesting though to read about the effect Donovan's presence had on the other characters and on himself. Donovan rubs off on his fellow students and they rub off on him. Despite Donovan's lack of brilliance academically, he adds his own touch to the robot some of the students in science are building. Surprisingly, his video game skills come in handy. Korman does a great job of creating memorable characters with some depth, they seem very real with real strengths and weaknesses. For me that makes all the difference in the world. I think theme-wise, Korman admirable demonstrates that while not all students have academic talents, everyone has something to add to the school environment. I recommend this to all looking for a good read, not only entertainment but lots of food for thought as well.

My daughter is in 5th grade and we just live all of Gordon Korman’s books. They are easy to read while being entertaining and fun. We always want to “just read one more chapter” because we can’t put it down.

In this book there is a boy named Donovan Curtis who everyone knew that he wasn't gifted in anyway. He would always pull of pranks and when he pulled of the mother of all pranks he didn't get in any trouble, instead, in a mix up, he got sent to a gifted school called the Academy of Scholastic Distinction. He has been through a ton of things from an unforgettable dramatic school dance to an experiment on a live person. After all of that Donovan realizes that he might be gifted in a different way. The way the Author (Gordon Korman) wrote this book was in that you could actually visualize what is happening, you could feel how the characters feels in their perspective, and the plot of this book is extremely interesting.

We're only a few pages in, and I can't count how many times my 6th-grade granddaughter and I have LOL-ed already. This book has been assigned to her ELAR class and we're excited to finish reading the rest. So far, it seems to be a fresh story with all the shenanigans and silliness a middle-schooler needs to keep on keeping on.