40th out of 124 books
—
125 voters
The Absolute Value of Mike
Mike tries so hard to please his father, but the only language his dad seems to speak is calculus. And for a boy with a math learning disability, nothing could be more difficult. When his dad sends him to live with distant relatives in rural Pennsylvania for the summer to work on an engineering project, Mike figures this is his big chance to buckle down and prove himself....more
Hardcover, 256 pages
Published
June 9th 2011
by Philomel
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Mike’s Dad, while lacking in social skills, is a mathematical engineering genius. Mike’s worst subject is math. When his father goes to Romania to lecture for 6 weeks, he arranges for Mike to stay with his great aunt and uncle in PA, whom he has never even met, with instructions to work on an artesian well project. When Mike arrives in PA he finds his Aunt Moo is totally off her rocker. She watches imaginary movies in the back seat of her car, Tyrone, among other things. Mike’s Uncle Poppy sits...more
Mike lives with his father a math genius of world renowned. Unfortunately for Mike his weakest subject is math. When Mike learns that his dad plans on shipping him off to live with his elderly relatives in Pennsylvania to work on an engineering project he sees this as a chance to redeem himself. Too bad his great aunt is wacky, his great uncle has lost the will to communicate, the town is full of misfits, oh yeah and there is no engineering project. There is however a town project to help a belo...more
Dad's an engineer. His head is always in his work, noticing very little of what Mike does or who he really is. Mike claims he has dyscalculia but his father is unaware and remains certain that he will get into Newton High if he completes a special project - building an artesian screw with his Great Uncle. Dad is spending the summer in Romania and Mike is going to live with his unknown relatives, Poppy and Moo.
The great engineering project turns into a much larger and more complicated adventure....more
The great engineering project turns into a much larger and more complicated adventure....more
Kathryn Erskine, http://www.kathyerskine.com National Book Award winner (Mockingbird), has mined the gold of her writing skill to create another masterpiece. The Absolute Value of Mike is the story of a fourteen-year-old boy sent to live with quirky, elderly relatives for a summer. As his great-aunt and uncle deal with the loss of their son, extreme poverty, and the diminishment of aging, Mike gets caught up in the town folks’ efforts to help one of their own adopt a Romanian child. Mike has al...more
When Mike’s Dad wants to talk to him he calls. On the phone. From his study across the hall. Mike’s Dad is a genius. He’s also the classic absent minded professor. It’s a good thing he has Mike around to take care of business - like pay the bills. Mike’s Dad can’t find his glasses when they are sitting on top of his head or his keys when they are in his pocket. When Mike’s Dad gets an opportunity to teach abroad for 6 weeks Mike isn’t that bummed that he can’t go - six months at home without sup...more
This book took me awhile to get into it; I felt like Erskine might have struggled with the start as well, but once the story got going, it took me away. The biggest challenge was understanding some of the more bizarre characters. Their conversations were just difficult to follow. As I came to understand them, though, they became more interesting, and I was able to appreciate them more fully.
I really enjoyed the story; it was definitely in the feel-good category. I loved the premise and enjoyed...more
I really enjoyed the story; it was definitely in the feel-good category. I loved the premise and enjoyed...more
This is a nice story of empowerment and independence that I'll be happy to recommend to a number of young teens and tweens. Erskine does a good job of developing Mike's character throughout the book, as he learns that people are not often what they appear to be on the surface. The author doesn't shy away from showing Mike's typical impatience and anger at things he doesn't fully understand. I'd love to have seen the other characters developed a little more, but this is a book geared towards youn...more
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Just a great book! funny, sad, all those really good thing. A boy who has discalculia is told by his dad that he needs to spend his summer at his aunt and uncle's working on an Artesian Screw, something that will give him experience as an engineer, something his father wants him to be, while his dad lectures in Romania. Not a good or comfortable thing to be if you aren't good with numbers.
Mike is concerned by the little town and family he ends up in: His aunt and uncle are poor, his uncle is st...more
Mike is concerned by the little town and family he ends up in: His aunt and uncle are poor, his uncle is st...more
Mike's father, a math genius, expects Mike to have inherited his love and ability for math problem solving. But, Mike has an incurable math disability, dyscalculia, which causes a communication gulf between them. When his father takes a job in Romania for 6 weeks, Mike is sent to live with his great Aunt and Uncle in Do Over, PA. (Donover minus the "N"). Here Mike shows his great talent for "People" problem-solving. The story is compelling,as Mike tries to help the town adopt a young boy from Ro...more
Mike's dad is a math genius. Mike has dyscalculia (think dyslexia, but with math). Since Mike's mother was killed in a car wreck several years ago, Mike and his dad have had to make it on their own, which means Mike takes care of his dad and everything else while his dad clumsily stumbles through life, trying to deal with the loss of his wife and figuring out how to be a family of two instead of three. Because Mike is the responsible one, paying the bills, doing the shopping, helping his dad fin...more
Could it be that in Kathryn Erskine, we've seen the emergence of the next Barbara Park? The remarkably smart humor found all through The Absolute Value of Mike brought to mind for me some of Barbara Park's most memorably funny works, classic books of juvenile comedy/drama such as Operation: Dump the Chump and Skinnybones. If Kathryn Erskine continues to develop her already impressive skills in the art of comedic storytelling, all while retaining the powerful emotional pull of her breakthrough n...more
Mike Frost is 14 years old, and ever since his mother died, he has been almost solely responsible for the care of his father, a brilliant math & engineering professor, who's fantastic with numbers, and terrible at managing life. Mike's own dyscalculia (a math disability) proves a sticking point between he and his father. To help solve this, Mike's father announces that while he will be teaching overseas for the summer, Mike will go to stay with relatives in rural Pennsylvania, to help build...more
Mike's father James is an engineering professor and mathematical genius, who will be spending the summer teaching in Romania. But he can't bring Mike, so he sends him off to rural Pennsylvania to stay with great-aunt Moo and great-uncle Poppy for six weeks. Poppy is supposed to be working on building an artesian screw and water turbine, and James decides that experience will help Mike learn more about math -- even though Mike has dyscalculia and feels hopeless about ever learning enough math to...more
Aug 19, 2011
Beverly
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
12-14 yr old
Recommended to Beverly by:
indiebound.org/nextlist
Shelves:
good-reads-for-reluctant-readers
The Absolute Value of Mike is a coming of age story with some very funny quirky characters that drive 14 year old protagonist, Mike, nuts. They also teach him what true friendship is, what family is and what community is. Mike is an "everyteen". He is not academically strong, but he likes to learn and is popular. His Dad is a math genius. Mike and his Dad have never really connected. Mike feels it is because his Dad is disappointed that Mike "does not stand out" . When Mike's Dad sends him to ru...more
The word 'quirky' best describes this book. As in Kathryn Erskine's better known book, Mockingbird, one of the characters in this story is on the autism spectrum. In this case, the main character's Dad is the one. Mike is a young teenager whose mother has died and whose father loves him but is unable to express it very fully. Mike's Dad is a math genius and Mike has a math deficiency called dyscalculia - the source of much misunderstanding between the two. Mike's great aunt and uncle, very quirk...more
Trust me, even though the cover of this book looks cute and funny, i ended up crying after reading it. The words used in this book seem so simple, but the story is very deep. The characters are unique and i laugh most of the time reading the way they behave.
The story of Mike, the main character, finding his own true passion and the courage to talk to his father about it is quite inspiring because most of us, i think, sometimes trapped in a negative or not-so-good label given by other people, or...more
The story of Mike, the main character, finding his own true passion and the courage to talk to his father about it is quite inspiring because most of us, i think, sometimes trapped in a negative or not-so-good label given by other people, or...more
Yikes, what a letdown. I feel the same way I did when I finished Last Year's What Happened on Fox Street. This has everything that SHOULD equal an award-winning book, but the execution is heavily Hallmark After-School-Movie. How many times do I need to hear that Past "blinked his eyes really fast" every time that there's a big clue reveal as to his former life?
The frequent references to "current" technology made me cringe, because I know in six months or so talking about MySpace and Facebook is...more
The frequent references to "current" technology made me cringe, because I know in six months or so talking about MySpace and Facebook is...more
I'm a huge fan of books with quirky odd characters as you may or may not know, and this book definitely delivers. The story is set in a small PA town. Mike moves in with his elderly (octogenerian) aunt and uncle when his socially awkward overweight father goes to Romania for the summer. They are not your typical seniors. Moo is a very active woman with awful eyesight and a lot of great one liners. Poppy doesn't move. He sits in the same chain in his duck slippers and only will eat scrapple. Both...more
I absolutely love this book, it is the perfect middle grade boy book and really quite different from Kathryn Erskine's National Book Award winning Mockingbird in that it features a boy character and has a lighter, funnier tone.
Mike has a hard time relating to his mathematical genius father, especially since he did not acquire the math genius gene and has dyscalculia, a mathematical disability. When his father leaves the country to teach for 6 weeks, Mike is left to the care of his elderly Great...more
Mike has a hard time relating to his mathematical genius father, especially since he did not acquire the math genius gene and has dyscalculia, a mathematical disability. When his father leaves the country to teach for 6 weeks, Mike is left to the care of his elderly Great...more
Although the things that happen in this book aren't what someone would call realistic, it was quirky and made me smile and laugh a bunch. Part of this was due to stumbling across another superb audio recording for car "reading." The narrator nailed the teenage boy voice and had great other voices as well ("old-lady voice," "cool hippy/homeless guy," socially inept dad).
The Absolute Value of Mike does a good, if unsubtle and somewhat cheesy, job of portraying the attempts of a kid to satisfy his...more
The Absolute Value of Mike does a good, if unsubtle and somewhat cheesy, job of portraying the attempts of a kid to satisfy his...more
Mike is a fourteen-year-old boy with a math disability. His father (a genius without many social skills) wants Mike to attend a Magnet Math High School and to that end sends him to stay with some elderly relatives who are in need of engineering help. To Mike’s surprise and delight, when he arrives he finds the town is much more interested in raising $40,000 to help a townsperson adopt a Romanian orphan. Mike becomes the organizer of the drive to raise the funds and although he lacks math skills,...more
Mike's math professor father is going to Romania for 6 weeks, so Mike must spend the summer with Poppy and Moo, his octogenarian aunt and uncle. The whole town of Do Over (Donover, the N is missing) is working together to help adopt a Romanian orphan named Misha, and Mike is supposed to help Poppy make his contribution to the cause. The problem is, Poppy won't get out of his chair or talk to anybody. Mike isn't ready to give up, not on Misha, Moo, Poppy, Gladys or himself, so he takes over the f...more
AN EXCELLENT BOOK. Fourteen year old Mike has the mathematical equivalent of dyslexia. However his father is a mathematical genius and professor. When his father contracts to teach in Romania for the summer, Mike is sent to stay with his great aunt and uncle in rural Pennsylvania. While living in a quirky town surrounded by quirky people, Mike improves his self esteem and learns that he has self worth, even if he can never live up to his father's expectations of Mike becoming an engineer or math...more
What promises to be a boring summer spent with his great-aunt and great-uncle in a little town in Pennsylvania, working on an artesian screw, turns into the most amazing experience 14-year-old Mike has ever had as he joins forces with an unlikely crew to try to bring home an orphan from Romania. As the town comes together to try to help Karen raise the money to adopt Misha, Mike somehow becomes the organizer and the one everyone looks to to make this almost impossible task happen.
I don't think I...more
I don't think I...more
This one was really entertaining, and I laughed out loud several times. Mike is the son of a mathematician who is the typical absent-minded professor. Mike's mom died years before, and Mike, who is 14, takes care of the practical parts of his dad's life (paying bills, etc.) His dad goes to eastern Europe to teach 1 summer, and Mike heads to Donover, PA to stay with his great-aunt & great-uncle, Moo and Poppy. Donover is a crazy little town where everyone knows everyone, and Mike becomes a bi...more
Mike, a 14-year-old boy, has a difficult relationship with his father. His dad is a math genius and expects Mike to follow in his footsteps. Mike, however, has a math disability and feels inadequate whenever he tries to communicate with his father. Although only tangentially related to math (see what I did there?), each chapter is named after a math concept, and there is some discussion throughout the book about how useful it is to know numbers, spatial relations, and problem solving skills. Thi...more
What a great book! I wasn't sure how I would feel about this one as I wasn't over-the-top in love with Kathryn Erskine's previous hit, Mockingbird. This one, however, was much more my style. The characters are quirky and fun (I love Moo!!), Mike's relationship with his father is believable, and the mission for the community to adopt Misha is intriguing. There's enough plot going on in the book and enough character development to draw in readers that are attracted to books for either of those qua...more
This is the story of Mike trying to please his father and be good at math and interested in engineering, but it's just not happening! When his father leaves to do an engineering project in Romania, Mike stays at this Great Aunt, Moo, and Great Uncle, Poppy.They are eccentric to say the least.
Mikes' father thinks he's working on an enginerring project while visiting, but in reality he is in charge of raising $40,000 to bring a Romanian orphan to America. In the end, he realizes he is smart in his...more
Mikes' father thinks he's working on an enginerring project while visiting, but in reality he is in charge of raising $40,000 to bring a Romanian orphan to America. In the end, he realizes he is smart in his...more
This was a really fun read. I enjoyed getting to know Moo and Past, and I felt Mike's frustration with the the father figures in his life. I thought the whole story line about an entire community helping to adopt a child (and supporting a nonhomeless man) was a little far fetched though.
I was also disappointed that Katherine Erskine through in some adult topics that I really didn't think were necessary. Some might argue that they were young adult topics, but however you identify them, I don't t...more
I was also disappointed that Katherine Erskine through in some adult topics that I really didn't think were necessary. Some might argue that they were young adult topics, but however you identify them, I don't t...more
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Kathryn Erskine spent many years as a lawyer before realizing that she'd rather write things that people might actually enjoy reading.
She grew up mostly overseas and attended eight different schools, her favorite being the Hogwarts-type castle in Scotland.
The faculty, of course, did not consist of wizards, although... how did the headmistress know that it was the wee redhead who led the campaign...more
More about Kathryn Erskine...
She grew up mostly overseas and attended eight different schools, her favorite being the Hogwarts-type castle in Scotland.
The faculty, of course, did not consist of wizards, although... how did the headmistress know that it was the wee redhead who led the campaign...more
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Feb 17, 2013 03:24pm