The Diary of a Seventh Grade Hybrid

by Lee J. Mavin

Ziggy's first year at Fuqian International school is hard enough with bullies who want to flush him, fat math teachers who make him do extra math tutoring and a strange girl who keeps following him around everywhere. But all of that is nothing compared to the secret he is keeping under his hat. The Diary of a Seventh Grade Hybrid is the first of a six part series, that slowly uncovers the memories, thoughts and adventures of Ziggy, a boy with a very special secret!

232 pages, Paperback

First published July 8, 2011

About the author

After six years in Shanghai, I am finally back in Sydney (brand new home). Here I will teach and focus on my writing! I will be starting my Phd in Arts at the University of Sydney in March 2015!
I have already polished off a children's novel, a collection of poetry and am about to publish a series of stories titled "The Students Sold Us Secrets Volume One" with ASJ Publishers. http://www.asjpublishing.com/
I'm also kept on my toes by my feisty wife and three year old daughter both of whom are Chinese. They like to let me know how bad my Chinese is on a daily basis.Oh yeah, I used to be an MC, I mean I was potentially the next Aussie Eminem,(just kidding) but there is an EP by yours trully somewhere out there in the world wide web....
Author interview here: http://thecultofme.blogspot.com/2013/...

Reviews

[Wayne Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do you think that you would feel if you were the only kid in school with antennae? This book, told in diary form, is the story of Sigmund (Ziggy) Zhao’s seventh-grade year at Fuqian International High School in Shanghai, China. He makes friends with a really short Japanese boy named Hiroki and a very tall kid named Kane, whom he nicknames “Tree Boy.” Even though Kane prefers soccer, the three learn to play basketball. Ziggy takes Math with Mr. Brown, whom the students call “Fatty,” Science with Mr. Smith, History with Mrs. Wang, Gym, and English with Miss Cherry Wood who is really nice. In fact, he develops a crush on her. While he has some trouble in math and science, one thing that he can do exceptionally well is write poetry. And he has to deal with a bullying eighth grader named Timmy Tang who calls him a freak and wants to “flush” him. All this is fairly normal.
However, there are several very puzzling situations and events. First of all, Ziggy has feathery green antennae which he tries to hide under an extra large basketball hat but everyone finds out about them anyway. He can’t remember anything about the past before waking up on the day before the first day of school. Yet, he has occasional flashbacks, and Miss Wood seems so familiar, as if he’s known her before. Also, he has dreams and hears a voice which talks about a Toyota robotics designer named Takeshi Shibuya, but it all seems to relate to some future invasion of earth by aliens, and it turns out that Takeshi is Hiroki’s uncle. A girl named Emily wants Ziggy to be her boyfriend, but later she starts acting all weird. Another girl with crazy hair named Mary starts following him around and giving him warnings. One of the oddest things is that he learns how to jump into other people’s bodies. In fact, once he jumps into the body of a roach. Two of his teachers, Brown and Smith, use strange computers to monitor him. And every now and then he is kidnapped, taken to a hospital-like room, and hooked up with all kinds of wires. What is going on?
The very title of the book may reveal a clue to help answer that question. The Diary of a Seventh Grade Hybrid “is the first of a six part series, that slowly uncovers the memories, thoughts and adventures of Ziggy, a boy with a very special secret.” Parents may want to know that in addition to some childish slang (Hiroki has “poo-brown” braces and the basketball team gets their “butts kicked”), Timmy Tang uses the phrase, “O my God,” when he sees Ziggy’s antennae, and Ziggy himself wants to know “what the h*** is going on.” The term “suck,” which many people feel borders on vulgar, is used frequently. There are several references to boy-girl relationships and dating between twelve-year-olds. Ziggy cheats on a test, gets revenge on Timmy, and is said to lie on several occasions. Also he says that he hates various people at different times. And there are a couple of scenes where kids end up being seen in their underwear. These kinds of things are fairly common in a lot of young adult novels today, and many folks will probably have no problem with most of them. Teens who are really into strange, science-fiction fantasy stories will very likely enjoy this book.

[Evangeline · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first 100 pages of The Diary of a Seventh Grade Hybrid was a total bore. There was barely any movement in the plot. Since this book is 232 pages long, I could barely believe the slow start took nearly half the book. The only reason why I pushed on was because I had to write this review. Otherwise, I would have given up on this book.

Things started moving at after the midpoint of the book. The happenings were familiar and I couldn't help thinking of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. I don't want to give any spoilers here but suffice to say that I wasn't impressed with the similarities.

Every character in the story is weird! Of course, because Ziggy might be a mutant, he qualifies as a weird character. But all the other characters? I spent most of the time wondering why nearly all the characters are abnormal. I would have understood and accepted this if the book is in the Fantasy or Sci-fi genres, but it isn't (at least according to its Amazon product page). This made all the weirdo characters even more out-of-place in the story.

Ziggy's crush on his teacher, Miss Wood, made me cringe inwardly many times. Many times, I couldn't help but think that Miss Wood was overstepping her boundaries as a teacher. After all, where can we find a female teacher in her 30s hugging and telling her infatuated 12-year old male student that she misses him? Or winking at that male student? Or blowing kisses when video chatting with him? All these will probably only happen if she is behaving inappropriately towards a minor! The reason why she does that is explained at the end of the book, but her actions are still shudder-worthy nonetheless.

Most of the story did not make sense to me. If I were Ziggy, I would be extremely curious to know about my mom's job or why I look weird or why strange things keeps on happening to me. The fact that Ziggy actually accepts everything abnormal as just unusual made the whole story seemed like child's play. Also, Ziggy's dramatic exaggerations in his diary entries did not help much.

After enduring the whole story, I was disappointed that the answer to Ziggy's mystery wasn't revealed. Perhaps the author wants to carry on the suspense into the sequel of The Diary of a Seventh Grade Hybrid, but I thought that it was a bit too much to make us read the whole book without providing an answer to the nagging mystery. Worse still, more mysteries were added.

The climax wasn't a climax. It was so mild that I felt the entire gearing up for the climax was a waste. It was a real let-down. Without a satisfying climax, the whole plot was flat.

When I finished the book, I realized that one of the reasons why I couldn't enjoy it is because they story caters for the children/tween market. This is probably the reason why I frequently found Ziggy's manner of talking and actions childish. I've read children/tween books and have never had this problem before.

I regret to say that I did not find The Diary of a Seventh Grade Hybrid up to my standard or liking. That being said, my review here is solely my opinion. A child or tween reader would probably think different from me.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intriguing sci-fi story of a middle-school boy who wakes up one morning without a past and has to figure out his odd present situation. Why can't he remember? Why is he so different from the other kids? Done in diary form with pretty good kid poetry interspersed, this seems best for 4th-6th graders dealing with the growing pains of budding adolescence, school, relationships. It could use a little more editing, and I wish it had more Chinese culture in it (it’s set in Shanghai), but I liked Ziggy and loved his best buddy, Hiroki, and thought the plot was clever. A book for boys, but strong female characters for girls. First in a series.