Bloor, Edward, (1997). Tangerine. New York: Scholastic. ISBN: 0439286034. 294 pages.

Summary and Evaluation: Paul Fisher and his family may have just moved to the strangest town in the United States: Tangerine, Florida. Weird things are always happening: muck fires burn behind the homes sending out smelly gasses, lightening strikes the same area every afternoon, and portable school buildings get sucked into sinkholes. Some of these events are linked to the history of the town. What was formerly filled with grove after grove of tangerine trees has turned into subdivisions and school buildings, and nature seems to rebel against all these new developments.

Paul can see this connection, but as he sees it, everyone else in his family is too absorbed in the "Erik Fisher Football Dream" to notice. For that matter, they're too focused on that dream to to really notice Paul. Their dad thinks Erik is a football star bound to get great scholarships at top colleges, but Paul sees Erik as a bully.

Paul's own soccer success is overshadowed his brother. Add to this the fact that Paul has a serious eye problem due to a mysterious accident that happened when he was a child. With the help of a new group of friends and a project on a new kind of tangerine, Paul begins to slowly come into his own. At the same time, he begins to remember events from his own past that shed much needed clarity for his whole family, whether they like it or not.

At times, this book is simultaneously mesmerizing and horrifying. It's amazing what people will overlook when singularly focused on one goal. Bloor's novel raises a lot of issues about the environment, social strata, and even family relations. There are times you want to shake his mother for her knee-jerk reactions or his father for his overzealous praise of Erik, but perhaps it's because these parents seem real and entirely fallible. Paul is a kid you can root for. While everyone else in town seems to have trouble seeing how astute he is, by letting him tell his own story, the reader is immediately convinced and follows him willingly.

Booktalk: I think this would be a good booktalk to do as a mood piece. To help it along, I think I could bring in a prop of goggles (like the ones he wears for sports) and/or a tangerine. Perhaps the tangerine could be especially useful as the outer skin is protecting a sweet fruit.