Judge A Book By Its Cover
Book Reviews and Synopses
Out Of My Mind
Sharon M. Draper
Draper, Sharon. Out Of My Mind. Simon & Schuster, Inc. New York. 2010.
Sharon Draper is the author of many best sellers such as, November Blues and Just Another Hero. Out Of My Mind was chosen as a 2011 IRA Young Adult's Choice. “If there is one book teens and parents should read this year, Out of My Mind should be it” says The Denver Post.
Out Of My Mind, is a book about a thirteen year old boy named Jake who has always been rich and lucky. He always got whatever he wanted, but when he found out the biggest secret of his life, Jake thought he might be out of his mind. Out Of My Mind starts out right after Jake’s family moved into a new town. It was the first day of school in his new middle school, and luckily he had no trouble making friends. His family moved often and he never got to stay at a school for more than one year. His parents always said that it was because of their work. On his first day of his new school, he was already being called to the principal’s office. He was confused because he hadn’t done anything wrong but he knew it would end up right, because for him, it always did.
Waiting for him in the principal’s office was a 40-something year old man whom he suspected was the principal. He told him to take a seat. He sat there as the principal examined him for what seemed like an hour, but it was only about ten minutes. Finally, the principal said, “Jake, you’re not a normal kid, I think it’s time you go to the special facility and get tested.” Just as Jake was about to open his mouth and ask questions, two muscular men with black suits came in and carried him away. Before he knew it, his mouth was duct taped and his eyes were covered with a blindfold.
It was about two hours later when one of the men finally pulled off the blindfold and took the duct tape off his mouth. Jake immediately started asking questions like “Where am I?” and “Who are you people?” They told him to take a seat and listen to what they were going to tell him. It turned out that a company had made a microchip that made people smarter by inserting it into their brain. The company had to test if the microchip was safe and if it worked. So they bribed Jake’s parents to do an experiment on him. Finally, they told him why he was in the facility at the moment: he needed to know about the microchip experiment by the time he was thirteen but his parents kept on moving so no one tracked them down because they didn’t want Jake to know about this.
In the end, Jake got back to his family and told them what happened. They said that they expected him to be mad at them for keeping a secret for so long. Instead, he told them that he didn’t need to be mad because 15 years from now, he was going to be pretty famous.
Out Of My Mind teaches people how to be strong even when you find out your parents kept a secret from you for thirteen years. Sharon Draper did an exceptional job of expressing the character’s feelings throughout the whole book!
Contributed by H. Gebremariam
5 out of 5 stars
January 22,2013