The Order of the Poison Oak Russel Middlebrook 02

✍ Scribed by Hartinger, Brent

• Book ID: 109040147
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 76 KB
• Series: Russel Middlebrook 2
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

Book 2 in the Russel Middlebrook Series

"Summer camp is different from high school. Something about spending the night. Things happen."

Geography Club 's Russel Middlebrook is back, and he's going to work as a summer camp counselor with his best friends Min and Gunnar. He's sick and tired of being openly gay in high school, and a peaceful summer at Camp Serenity is just what he needs to relieve the stress that comes from being an "out" teenager.

But he doesn't count on sudden new rivalries with Min and Gunnar, or having to chase after a cabin full of unruly campers. And he especially doesn't count on a fellow counselor as hunky as Web Bastion.

Things do happen at Camp Serenity, especially at night. Brent Hartinger's third novel is a story about Indian legends, skinny-dipping in moonlit coves, and the mysteries of a secret society called the Order of the Poison Oak. But more than anything, this witty page-turner is about bravery in the face of unexpected danger, the passion of a sizzling summer romance, and, most of all, the courage to be yourself.

From School Library Journal

Grade 8 Up–Sixteen-year-old Russel Middlebrook hopes to escape his identity as the token gay guy at school by spending the summer as a counselor in a camp for burn victims. At first he finds that controlling eight hyperactive, 10-year-old hellions is grueling, but once he charms them with a retelling of a fable based on Native American legend in which a multicolored crow is burnt black by fire, he has no trouble taming them. And with their cooperation and enthusiasm, he creates the Order of the Poison Oak, a special club dedicated to outcasts of all types. With its titillating cover, high dramatics, and steamy romance triangles, Hartinger's novel will definitely score big with teens hankering for a sequel to Geography Club (HarperCollins, 2003). But even with improved characterizations and fast pacing, it's not enough to cloak the author's less-than-subtle attempt at equating burn-scar victims with victims of homophobic bigotry and prejudice. Unfortunately, this well-intended yet domineering metaphor smothers many of the novel's better elements, and ultimately will render more groans than shouts of triumph from its readers.–Hillias J. Martin, New York Public Library
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From Booklist

Gr. 7-10. In this sequel to Geography Club (2003), 16-year-old Russel, now openly gay and tired of being the freak at school, tries to escape as a counselor in a rural summer camp with his two best friends. The camp kids are 10-year-old burn survivors, scarred and disfigured, and Russel identifies with them. They also have fun together, once he stops seeing them as "all nervous and noble." But Russel fights with his friends, especially after discovering that he and bisexual Min are attracted to the same gorgeous counselor guy--who tries to have unprotected sex with each of them. There's too much metaphor and message, including the stories Russel tells the kids about raging fires, hidden beauty, and developing toughness. What readers will like best is the honest, tender, funny, first-person narrative that brings close what it's like to have a crush and hate a friend. In one unforgettable scene, some teenagers call the scarred kids freaks, and to his lasting shame, Russel says nothing. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved