“Ungifted” by Gordon Korman is a story about a boy named Donovan Curtis. Donovan Curtis is very impulsive and never thinks about the consequences of his actions. He, however, is forced to endure the consequences of his actions from the big basketball game at school. After skipping detention halfway through, Donovan, on an impulse, slams a stick into an atlas statue on top of a hill near the gym. A bolt breaks and the globe from the atlas rolls down the hill and causes chaos in the gym. Through a series of mistakes, Donovan somehow escapes punishment and is accepted into an academy for above-average students. Donovan understands right away that this is the only way to escape punishment.
When Donovan goes to the academy, he meets Noah, Chloe, Abigail and Mr. Osborne(a.k.a Mr. Oz) and quickly realizes he is going to stick out like a sore thumb. However, even though he is failing all his classes, he quickly earns many friends. He introduces Noah, the smartest person around, to youtube which Noah then spends his life obsessed with. Noah wants to show that he doesn’t need to go to the academy and that for him the academy is useless. One way he shows this is by always purposely failing his tests.
In robotics class, he becomes a valued member of the team because of how good of a robot driver he is. After getting settled in, the teachers learn that the entire robotics class has never taken health so they would have to take a summer course Donovan volunteers his pregnant sister as a teacher for the class so his classmates would not have to go to summer school.
A few days later the superintendent, the man who is searching for the boy who destroyed the gym, comes to thank Donovan’s sister for helping all the students with their health project. When he comes, he notices one of the teacher’s
Donovan is forced to go back to his old school but doesn’t get in too much trouble. Chloe, one of Donovan’s friends, asks Donovan’s old friends if he is doing ok. Once hearing this Donovan’s old friends arrange for Donovan to be able to go to the robotics meet and watch. In the final match, Donovan can not stand the impulse anymore and goes to his team takes the control and help lead his team to victory. He, however, fails. When the other team’s robot hits their own robot Donovan is angered. He uses their robot for target practice as he destroys the other robot. Both robots were disqualified from the competition. At that moment Donovan’s sister realizes she is about to give birth. She is rushed to the hospital and gives birth safely. In the end, everyone is pretty happy because Donovan gets to continue robotics club but, gets to stay at his old school.
The book is fun to read. It is fun and suspenseful to see what will happen to Donovan and how far will everything go. The only flaw is that there are a lot of plotholes. First of all, everyone at the academy seems to be socially awkward. No one is close to normal. Even at an academy for smart people, there should be at least one socially normal person. Also, everyone at the academy cannot be creative. Another problem is that everyone worships Donovan for doing nothing. They stare at him with awe and respect when he names their robot. Noah idolizes him because he shows Noah YouTube. Also, how could the smartest kid ever not have any idea what YouTube is! Shouldn’t he have read about it in an article somewhere? Other than that the book was very good. It had many open ends that were closed up very effectively. I would rate this book 3 out of 5 stars.