If a Tree Falls at Lunch Break Gennifer Choldenko

A Flavour of the Book: “This is lame but I’m actually looking forward to school this year, because every day this summer was like crap: dog crap, cat crap – I even had a few elephant crap days…”

The Authortrek View: This is a very entertaining novel about two adolescents called Kirsten and Walk. Walk’s a black boy who has worked hard to gain a scholarship to attend Kirsten’s posh school, so he faces the problem of having to settle down in his new school. Kirsten also has problems, as her best friend Rory has started hanging out with Brianna, the alpha female of their school year. Kirsten is repelled by Brianna’s obnoxious antics, but her mum is insistent that she tries to do her best to fit in. Unfortunately, Kirsten’s parents are rowing all the time, and like Ant in Notes from a Liar and her Dog, she feels unloved and her father is hardly ever present. Kirsten compensates her feelings of unworthiness by eating too much food, so much so that her mother sends her to a psychiatrist. If a Tree Falls at Lunch Break is narrated from the point of view of both Kirsten and Walk, although it’s a bit strange that Gennifer Choldenko has chosen to tell Kirsten’s story in the first person, while Walk is relegated to the third person. It’s not as if this device is used solely to help distinguish who’s telling the story at a particular moment, as each chapter and page helpfully makes this very clear. This stylistic quibble aside, If a Tree Falls at Lunch Break is an excellent story with many juicy twists and turns that will very much appeal to its target early-teens audience.

You can read a resume of the book on our Amazon store below. To find out more about the editor, please visit our Gennifer Choldenko page.

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