Brave by Svetlana Chmakova
Title: Brave by Svetlana Chmakova
Author Name: Svetlana Chmakova
Lexile Level:GN360L
Age Rating: 10 and up
Star Rating: ✦✦✦✦✧
Genre: Realistic, School Days, Comic Book
Favorite Character & Characterization:
My favorite character was obviously Jensen! I’ve been bullied in the past, so his story was a tiny bit relatable, though the way he got bullied was much more extreme…
Jensen is portrayed as a nerdy guy who likes drawing, gets bullied, left out from his own friend group, and treats middle school as a video game. Coupled with his irrational fear of sunspots, and being dragged into the school newspaper, he is definitely out of his element. However, he manages to pull through, which is pretty admirable.
Storyline Development:
The story starts off with Jensen introducing himself. He believes that the zombies are coming for them all, and shares that his dream is to become an astronaut at NASA. He doesn’t like math and is instead more of an artsy type of guy.
The story develops as he avoids bullies and becomes friends with the newspaper crew who want him to participate in their social experiment on victims of bullying.
He also becomes friends with his partner for his English project; Jorge, who is portrayed as a jock. The story ends with more people being nice to him and Jensen learning that he isn’t the only one struggling to get through middle school. Not as cliche as I thought it’d be! Great!
Worldbuilding:
The story takes place at Berrybrook Middle School.
Feedback & Critique:
- The bullying that happened was pretty unrealistic… Everyone is pretty mean to Jensen for no apparent reason, so maybe the author should’ve given a reason why even Jensen’s friends dislike him.
- Reasons that could be used: Maybe Jensen ruined something by accident, maybe he did something, but people don’t hate other people for no reason.
- The whole setting is sorta weird. The middle school is basically treated like a high school movie with all the weird drama and people breaking up in the cafeteria.
- Not going to lie: people don’t really date in middle school. So the author could’ve just called it Berrybrook High School.
The whole stereotyping that happens in high school chick-flicks is also evident in the story. For example: jocks, nerds, cheerleaders, etc.