Mari Mancusi's Gamer Girl, is a young adult novel full of life and life lessons. Published in 2008 by Penguin Group, Gamer Girl is a novel for any young adult reader who loves video games, who has ever felt like an outsider, or who sometimes wishes she could live in a virtual world.
Gamer Girl Virtual Reality Versus Real World
After her parents' divorce, Maddy Starr moves into her grandmother's home with her mother and younger sister. Nervous about starting in a new school, Maddy finds herself as the brunt of the school's top bully's jokes. When she receives a long-awaited online computer game for her sixteenth birthday, Maddy is excited to start. There she makes a friend and finds that it is easier to be herself in a virtual world than in the real world. As much as her virtual world is an escape from real world problems, Maddy still needs to find a way to overcome them.
Gamer Girl is a story about a virtual world versus a real world, in which the virtual world is infinitely better than the real world. At times, Maddy wants nothing more than to be her video game character, Allora – to be powerful and beautiful and spend forever with her online friend.
Good Young Adult Fiction
But Gamer Girl is also a story about bullying in school and learning to stand up for yourself and for your friends. The two sides to the story meet together, putting an age-old problem into a very contemporary story. Beyond which, Gamer Girl makes a statement on the continually growing common issues of divorce and the effect it has on children.
Mari Mancusi 's first person narrative captures the heart of a sixteen-year-old girl within her humour, language and mannerisms. Readers are drawn into the story firstly through the narrative, and secondly through the story itself. The narrative told in the eyes of the protagonist Maddy asks readers to sympathize with her as she recounts her life at school and efforts to fit in or make a difference. Maddy's changing viewpoint during the novel makes Gamer Girl not only funny, but an encouraging coming of age story.
Mari Mancusi's Gamer Girl is a great novel for young adults. It is inspiration for teens who face the pressures of trying to fit in in high school. And it is for young "gamer girls" themselves who might like to live in a virtual reality for a while.
Michelle Wright - Michelle is an avid reader and writer, with a focus on book, film and music reviews, gluten free recipes, and fiction writing "how-tos."
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