Ungifted by Gordon Korman

Published by Balzar + Bray, 2012

Korman's dive into middle school robotics skates by some flaws to deliver a mildly heart-warming story about a trouble-maker named Donnie who turns the definition of "gifted" on its head.  After a prank gone wrong, Donnie is inadvertently enrolled in the Academy for Scholastic Distinction, a school for intelligently gifted children of the district.  The teachers and students all know that Donnie is not traditionally gifted, but the case is made in nearly every chapter that Donnie is socially gifted.  However, few teachers fail to recognize Donnie's giftedness and appear to be out to "get" him, a failure on Korman's part to portray today's schoolteachers in a positive and encouraging light.

Ungifted is fascinating in its discussions about robotics; it is indeed an entirely competitive world of its own, and the ending could have done with more description about the culminating competition.  While Korman's handling of the ending is unsettling and unsatisfactory, at best, readers can be assured that overall Ungifted is a book that one can recommend with no reservations to a middle school student.  Korman writes about bullying, fitting in, and the pressures of adolescence without resorting to unsavory elements like so many other novels.

Salvage by Alexandra Duncan

Published by Greenwillow, 2014

Ava is a seventeen-year-old girl born aboard a spaceship, the Parastrata; when she makes an understandable, yet regrettable, mistake, she is cast out by her patriarchal family to the unfamiliar and unforgiving Earth below.  With just her aptitude for “Fixes” and her spirit for survival, Ava must navigate through the Gyre, a floating wasteland of trash in the Pacific, to ultimately end up in Mumbai, where she searches for her modrie, her blood-aunt.   Duncan delivers a finely-paced dystopian science fiction novel that relentlessly charges through the finer plot points, which may leave readers confused as to how exactly Earth resulted in a technologically-advanced wasteland.  Another small hiccup is the strange dialogue given to Parastrata’s inhabitants, and Ava, without explanation, which may be off-putting to slow and reluctant readers.  However, the strength of Ava’s character bears the story well through its 528 pages.    Fans of Beth Revis’s Across the Universe and Matched by Ally Condie will appreciate Duncan’s first dive into the genre.