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A review by beths0103
The Fourth Stall by Chris Rylander
4.0
So I personally would have given this book three stars, but I added the extra one because I think my girl-bias might have skewed my impression of the story a bit. This is definitely a book written for boys. And you know what? I'm perfectly OK with that. I need to find more books for my classroom that appeal to boys and this one fits the bill.
I love how tongue-and-cheek the whole story is with being a spoof of The Godfather, all the way down to the cover art. Though I think adults will get more of a kick out of this than the kids since I'm assuming most 11 and 12 year-old boys haven't seen The Godfather (Truth be told, neither have I, but I'm old enough to know a great deal of facets of the story since it's so much a part of American pop culture). Still, reading this book made me consider for the first time my need to actually watch this movie. I've never had any desire up until now to see The Godfather, but now I feel like some really hilarious scenes in this book probably went right over my head since I've never seen the movie.
The writing in this book was really simple, but I'm sure that was by design. Rylander was clearly targeting boys for this story, and middle-grade boys like clean, no-nonsense writing. As I was reading all I could think was, "Why didn't he describe this character more?" or "Can't you describe the setting in more detail?" but the more I read the book, the more I realized the sparse descriptions were all a part of the boy-appeal.
I love how tongue-and-cheek the whole story is with being a spoof of The Godfather, all the way down to the cover art. Though I think adults will get more of a kick out of this than the kids since I'm assuming most 11 and 12 year-old boys haven't seen The Godfather (Truth be told, neither have I, but I'm old enough to know a great deal of facets of the story since it's so much a part of American pop culture). Still, reading this book made me consider for the first time my need to actually watch this movie. I've never had any desire up until now to see The Godfather, but now I feel like some really hilarious scenes in this book probably went right over my head since I've never seen the movie.
The writing in this book was really simple, but I'm sure that was by design. Rylander was clearly targeting boys for this story, and middle-grade boys like clean, no-nonsense writing. As I was reading all I could think was, "Why didn't he describe this character more?" or "Can't you describe the setting in more detail?" but the more I read the book, the more I realized the sparse descriptions were all a part of the boy-appeal.