Reccomended Read

Recommended Read
Reviewed By: Brandon Lopez
Book: The House of the Scorpion
Author: Nancy Farmer
Target Audience: The House of the Scorpion is written for kid’s ages 9-14 the book is really good and is appropriate.
Reader Rating: 5 stars
Significant Passage#: Pull out the glass!” Cried Emilia in a high scared voice. “Maria stay away!” I want to see!” yelled the little girl. Matt heard a slap and Maria’s shriek of outrage. His head was swimming. He wanted to throw up, but before he could, everything went black. P.19
Synopsis: Fields of white opium poppies stretch away over the hills, and uniformed workers bend over the rows, harvesting the juice. This is the empire of Matteo Alacran, a feudal drug lord in the country of Opium, which lies between the United States and Aztlan, formerly Mexico. Field work, or any menial tasks, are done by "eejits," humans in whose brains computer chips have been installed to insure docility. Alacran, or El Patron, has lived 140 years with the help of transplants from a series of clones, a common practice among rich men in this world. The intelligence of clones is usually destroyed at birth, but Matt, the latest of Alacran's doubles, has been spared because he belongs to El Patron. He grows up in the family's mansion, alternately caged and despised as an animal and pampered and educated as El Patron's favorite. Gradually he realizes the fate that is in store for him, and with the help of Tam Lin, his bluff and kind Scottish bodyguard, he escapes to Aztlan. There he and other "lost children" are trapped in a more subtle kind of slavery before Matt can return to Opium to take his rightful place and transform his country.

A bookmark

Plot Chart

Plot Chart
o Children discover Matt and take him to the big house.
o Matt is imprisoned because he is a clone.
o Maria and Celia rescue Matt and take him to El Patron, a powerful drug lord and the man who he is a clone of.
o Matt is educated, and grows up under the guard of Tam Lin, the care of Celia, the rivalry of Tom, and the friendship of Maria.
o At one of El Patron’s birthday parties, Maria and Matt get into a fight, and while trying to make up, Matt accidently tells Maria’s father that he, a dirty clone, loves Maria and Maria’s father take Maria away.
o Matt’s life becomes steadily more depressing until the funeral for El Patron’s grandson, who is Tom’s grandfather, where Maria forgives him.
o At Steven (Tom’s brother) and Emilia's (Maria’s sister) wedding Maria tells Matt that she loves him, but afterward El Patron has a heart attack and Matt realizes the horrible truth: He exists to be killed for a heart transplant so El Patron will live longer.
o When he is brought in for a transplant, Celia reveals that she has been poisoning Matt just enough so that he can’t be used for transplants.
o Tam Lin helps Matt escape from El Patron’s country to Atzlan, where Matt is taken to an orphanage run by the harsh keeper’s.
o Matt makes friends with three other boys held by the keepers, and together they escape to San Luis, where Maria is.
o Matt meet’s Maria’s mother, who explains to Matt that he is really human, in soul and international law.
o Matt returns to El Patron’s opium land only to find out that El Patron arranged to have almost everyone at the place where Matt grew up to die, but Matt swears to take Opium and make into a non-drug non-border land.

Character Celia

Celia
Celia is kind, loving, and friendly she takes care of Matt and teaches him a lot she does not let El Patron hurt him.

Character: El Patron

El Patron
El Patron is old, greedy, selfish, and rich. He is trying to rule all of his home by living along time.
P.54 He was extremely thin, with shoulderlenght white hair neatly combed beside a face so seamed and wrinkled, it hardly seemed real.

Character: Matteo Alacran

Matt, Clone
Matt is a clone El Patron made him to take his life he is the type of person that knows nothing at first to being very smart.
P.23 “What’s going on?” came a voice Matt hadn’t heard before. “You need a vet for this beast.”

Hi, I am Brandon Lopez and I am a good reader I like to read a lot my favorite book is the Eragon books and all the Pendragon books. I also think that The House of the Scorpion is also a good book I reccomend it to anyone.

Book Review Part Four: Conclusion

The House of the Scorpion is a great book about a clone of the most powerful man on Earth, filled with moral questions, sprayed with plot twists,and flooded with emotional land mines. I recommend this novel to anybody who likes moral books, but be warned: this is not an adventure book. In my opinion, one of the greatest things about this book is that it doesn't use violence to be exciting.
So, I recommend this book to any fan of books that utilize moral and emotional plot twists, but not to fans of action. This is a book for any avid reader, and makes a great addition to any collection.


-Jonas Mufson

Book Review Part three: My responses

I could relate in very few ways to characters in this story, possibly because I'm not in a very high or low position, like most of the characters were. I believe that the opinion's of the author were that:
1) drugs are bad
2) killing people to stay alive longer is bad
3) you should except what life gives you
I'm in total agreement with all of these. The House of the Scorpion suggests that in the future, cloning will have become possible, and people will use that to try to stay alive longer.
This is a (uh... to many good words) rockular (Rock You Lar) book filled with great twists, awesome themes, and a lot of rockular moral twists. I would not change a word of this book. Ever!

"Matt's heart sank. Esperanza nodded her head as if she agreed with Jorge: Boys did tell scary stories. They did make things up. But then she said,'The warehouse full of laudanum is also myth, I suppose?'"

End part three

Book Review Part 2: Plot chart

In the beginning of this book, six-year-old Matt has lived his life under the careful care of Celia, who he thinks of as a Mother. That changes when three children-Steven, Emilia,and Maria-lure Matt out of the house,but during the process of breaking out, he is injured, and rushed to the big house where Celia works. Once there, Matt discovers that he is a clone, which means that he is treated like scum by everybody in the room except Maria, and thrown into a locked room where he is kept prisoner, until Celia finds him. Just after he is rescued, Matt meets El Patron, the man from which he was cloned, and the most powerful drug lord in the land of Opium between America and Atzlan. Matt starts leading a much better life than most clones because of El Patron's power. One day, Matt's bodyguard, Tam-Lin, shows Matt a secret oasis outside of the opium fields, and on the way he learns about eejits,the workers in the field who tried to flee across the border, but now had implants in there head, controlling them. Later, Matt learns about a secret passage inside the big house. Soon after, Matt is blamed for the death of Maria's dog, Furball, and realizes that he loves Maria just before she leaves. A long time later, El Patron's (really old) son dies and at the funeral, where Matt gets the chance to talk to Maria in the secret passage and she forgives him for killing , but just then they overhear Felicia (the most drunk person in the entire household) say that she killed Furball, but before they hear anymore Tam-Lin comes and takes Maria away to her covenant. Some time later Tam-Lin, Matt,and Celia are talking, and Tam-Lin tells Matt that El Patron keeps all his treasures in a huge hoard where he wants to be buried. Then, at Emilia and Steven's wedding, El Patron has heart attack, and Matt, who was hiding in the secret passage watching realizes the reason people have clones including himself is that they use them for organ transplants, killing the clones, but giving the possibility that if one has enough clones, he or she can live forever. Matt is caught and brought to the hospital so he will be ready for transplant when Celia reveals to everyone that she has been feeding Matt arsenic, making him impossible to transplant from. Matt escapes to Atzlan, where he is kept prisoner by keepers, but makes three friends: Fidelito, Chacho, and Ton-Ton. They escape to Maria's covenant, where Maria's mother tells Matt hat since El Patron is dead he has become El Patron, and gives him a mission find out what was going on in Opium. After arriving in Opium Matt discovers a horrifying secret: El Patron wanted the people he knew to be part of his hoard. Everone he knew from the big house was dead except for Maria, Celia, the eejits, Daft Donald( one of El Patrons bodyguards), and his music teacher. At the end Matt swears to correct the mistakes of El Patron.
End Part two

Book Review Part 1: Technical info.

"For an instant Matt wasn't sure he'd heard right. Then the enormity of the situation sank in on him.'But I didn't! I wouldn't do such a thing to Maria! I love her!'"
Author: Nancy Farmer
Title: The House of the Scorpion
*Other publication info is copyrighted to Nancy farmer... Somehow*

http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/2003/bioimages/farmer.jpg (Anyone Know how to copy a jpeg onto this?)

Nancy Farmer grew up on the Arizona-Mexico border. Her father managed a hotel in Yuma, where she worked the desk from the age of nine. She couldn't help but overhearing stories from the cowboys, rodeo people, railroad, and circus workers who patronized the hotel. She joined the Peace Corps in the 1960's, and served in India for two years. When her tour of duty was complete, Farmer next spent 17 years living and working in Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
Nancy published a few novels and a picture book with a Zimbabwean publisher, and then she stopped writing for a while. Farmer, her husband, and her son moved back to the United States. She still could not write. She kept at it, and soon published her first American title, Do You Know Me?. In 1994, the title that really got her noticed, The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm was published. This title had been one of the books originally published earlier when she lived in Zimbabwe. Farmer revised it and published it with her new American publisher. It is set in Zimbabwe, in the future, where the president's chief of security's children, bored with living in a too secure compound, decide to go out into the city of Harare. They are kidnapped by minions of She Elephant, and three mutant detectives are hired to get them back. Wonderful stuff: it was a Newbery Honor title in 1995.(www.teenspoint.org/reading_matters/columns2.asp?column_id=1153&column_type=tpauthprofile)

Genre: Science Fiction
I believe that this book has many themes, the most important of which is that nobody, no matter who they are, should be treated like dirt.

Background: The House of the Scorpion is set in a future where drug lords rule the border between America and Mexico (then called Atzlan), and cloning is possible, but clones are treated like livestock.


End Part 0ne

Co-Founder Profiles

Jonas Mufson and Brandon Lopez are the creators of this amazing book blog!

Bio: Jonas Mufson
I live in Vista, California, near the coast. I'm writer/founder/producer/inventor of nothing but this blog(yet), and am considered a nerd by some (un)cool popular kids in my class. My favorite animals are: dragons, cats, and hummingbirds.

I'm an avid reader, but only of good books. I prefer reading fantasy, specifically magic, but sci-fi too. Although I have a high reading level, I don't always read hard, complex books. For example, I really like the Warriors by Erin Hunter. I am currently reading The Lighthouse Land, and Just finished Pendragon: The Soldiers of Halla .