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Title: Octavia Boone's Big Questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything
Author: Rebecca Rupp
Narrator: Ellen Grafton
Format: Unabridged
Length: 3 hrs and 22 mins
Language: English
Release date: 09-14-10
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Genres: Kids, Ages 8-10
Publisher's Summary:
After her parents find clashing answers to lifes big questions, its time for Octavia to make some choices of her own in this poignant, funny, thought-provoking novel.
Octavias best friend, Andrew, wants to know why time runs forward instead of backward, or if its possible to talk to an alien jellyfish. But Octavia has much bigger questions on her mind: Why do bad things happen, like Hurricane Katrina and 9/11? What is the meaning of life? Is there a God
Octavias father is convinced that art and Henry David Thoreau hold the key to life. Her mother, Ray, though, has always been seeking greater meaning-up until now. Octavias problem is not only that her parents have different answers to the big questions but that their answers are threatening to tear her family apart.
Could it be that some questions are too big to have just one answer? Could it be that the universe is far wider than Octavias-or perhaps anyones- view of it?
Members Reviews:
It is difficult to believe anyone would find this book 'thought provoking'
This book should get 2 1/2 stars: there is nothing objectionable enough for me to say 'I hate' it, so it gets a 3 star rating.
My reaction can be summed up in one word: MEH. It's sad that a young person would waste his or her time reading this book when library bookshelves OVERFLOW with meaningful, exciting, transformative and enlightening books, both fiction and non-fiction. Life is short, time is valuable, and what you read (or otherwise focus your attention upon) shapes you as a person. So: choose to spend your reading time wisely. MY time was wasted reading this book, but if my review helps you decide to pass it by, then I can salvage at least SOME purpose for the time spent.
Author Rebecca Rupp has a Ph.D. in cell biology yet makes her heroine Octavia sound like a scientific moron by having her think she can use her science fair project to destroy her mother's interest in fundamentalist religious beliefs. Octavia believes she is doing actual scientific research when she asks different people to pray, meditate and/or engage in feng shui over bean plants to influence their growth rate. When there is no obvious difference between the control plants and the plants subjected to "spiritual practices," Octavia is crushed and moans, "I'd been so sure that I would be able to prove that prayer doesn't work and that, therefore, there is no God."
Give me a break that any teenager with half a brain would seriously think he or she could so easily "prove" there is no God. Rupp takes a situation which COULD have led to thought-provoking dialogue and a realistic story and simply makes it an asinine joke. First, I think most teens would recognize the obvious flaw that if you do not believe in God, then your mumbling some words out into the void does not constitute "prayer," and, second, if the existence of God could be proven or disproven so easily it would have been done long, long, ago, honey. Even a moron can reach that conclusion without much effort.
Rupp is a proponent of homeschooling (as I generally am, though I also believe we will need good schools and homeschooling is not appropriate for everyone) and she no doubt wrote this book, in part, as a protest against the conservative "Bible-believing, Jesus freak" mentality which pervades so much of the American homeschooling subculture.