Patterson's Maximum Ride Series

I was blessed by a student who donated a half-dozen hard cover books to my classroom as her graduation gift to the school.  One of the books she donated was from James Patterson's Maximum Ride Series.  There have been a couple of my students who are obsessed with this series and who kept bugging me to read them.

The book, The Final Warning, was the fourth book in the series.  It is a relatively short book.  Easy read.  I love that this book can stand alone--I did not read the first three books in this series; however, I did not feel like this omission diminished my understanding of the book.  There is a science-fiction element that I did not expect from a Patterson book.  The book was "OK," but I did not like it enough to read any more in this series.  I can, however, understand the vast appeal to tween/teen readers.

Special note--on the back of this novel (not sure if true for all versions and/or all books in this series) the following is written:  "Special care has been taken with the language and content of The Final Warning."  This book HAD the potential to be more graphic and/or contain some inappropriate language, but thankfully it does not.  This should be a huge bonus for parents of children who love to read adventure books.

Middle School: Get Me Out of Here!

I had read and heard some buzz from blogs and from students about James Patterson's adolescent books.  Many of my students from last year went on and on about his Maximum Ride series.  Now he has a new Middle School series.  I read the second book in the series--Middle School: Get Me Out of Here! 

First, you do not have to read the first book to understand this book.  I did not feel like there were any gaps in the story that I was missing because I inadvertantly started with book two.  Second, if you like The Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, I suspect you will like this junior high equivalent.  The text is written in the journal-like style.  It even contains sketches much like the  The book covers contemporary issues facing junior high students including cyber bullying.

This is a fairly quick and easy read; may be appropriate for low or reluctant junior high school readers.  This series also has a website called "Rafe's Rants" (click HERE) that I checked out briefly.  The video was pretty funny.  You can also get an idea more about these books.

I still have the Maximum Ride series on my "To Read" list--but who knows when/if I will get to them.