Hello everyone! It’s Ashlee; you’re host here one Readability! Today, we’re going to be doing another review on a book I haven’t read in a while, but I wanted to review it.
Save me a Seat by Sarah Weeks and Gita Varadarajan (I’m so so so sorry if I pronounced her last name wrong.) this book was pretty heartwarming, and I wanted to share it with you all!
Also, I hope you enjoyed the episode I did with Emma on the Sea of Monsters; I just want to thank her so much for joining me! It was really fun! Alrighty, without further ado, let’s get onto the review!
The Book Review Podcast
The Review
Save Me a Seat is a story of two kids, Joe and Ravi, and they are very diverse from one another. Joe has been born and raised in New York; he‘a from America and has a pretty normal life.
Except for some things… Joe has trouble and school and has a bully in the class, Dillon Samreen. It’s worse than Dillon makes Joe feel bad that his mom works in the school and just makes fun of him. Ravi has life a little different. After moving straight from India to New York, America is a bit confusing for him.
He has to learn how things work, what to do, and how to fit in! The things the two have in common are pretty impressive. Yes, they both need to fit in, but they also have one enemy, Dillon. The bully! You watch as these two characters come together and become better friends, spite their differences.
Author Praise
Sarah and Gita do this double perspective novel very well, giving their idea of what the characters think of others. They both make this story a great lesson about friendship and being kind to others. It was a great read and good for younger readers to understand the message the tow made.
Basic Facts
- The book has 240 pages
- There are 49 chapters
- I am not sure if this book has won any awards
- The authors of this book are Gita Varadarajan and Sarah Weeks
- The publishing brand is Scholastic inc.
What is My Rating?
It’s time to rate! From what I remember from this book, it shared a lot of different views on things from very different people, Ravi and Joe. It was very diverse and explained things that others from different parts of the world may not know.
I learned a lot about Indian culture from Ravi and life in Joe’s life. This book could be a bit unrealistic at times, but it was a pretty decent book!
As always, I know it seems like a low rating, but trust me, it’s not. 3.5 is on the verge of four, and four means I loved the book a lot! For Save Me a Seat, in my opinion, I enjoyed the book and liked it.
The story was pretty nice to read about, and overall, is good. I feel 2.5 and 3 are too low, and four is possibly too high, so I’m going to give it 3.5 stars out of five. It’s a great book, I may reread it, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as other books I’ve read before.
Would I Recommend?
After giving the book a rating, we have to see if I were to recommend it! The straight answer, sure! If the person I’m recommending likes these kinds of books, I would think this novel would be a perfect fit for them!
It has some humor in it, the ending is happy, you can relate to some of the characters, and you can learn about different cultures! I think this is an excellent book to recommend to people, just for a quick read.
Highlights Segment
Ready for spoilers? Well, here we go!
- I think the friendship Gita and Sarah write for both Ravi and Joe is pretty lovely! At first, they have no idea who each other are. Once the story progresses, they start to notice that maybe they more in common then they think, and we can finally stop our enemy, Dillon, once and for all.
- It’s crazy how this all taken place in one week, all the important events, the character development happens in one week. This does mean that the story does move a little quicker, but it was okay for me.
- Ok, so maybe this time, it wasn’t filled with many spoilers, but I wanted to mention the message of this story. Don’t judge a book by its cover and friendship overall. This story brings that up, and some kids can relate to it. Topics like that must be mentioned in books for kids.
Character Thoughts
Alrighty, character thoughts! We don’t have too many characters to go off of, but I’ll explain a few. We have the teachers, Mr. Barnes; he was only mentioned, Mrs. Beam, the fifth-grade teacher Ravi and Joe have. Mrs. Beam.. has some trouble getting to know Ravi. And Miss.
Frost helps Joe with his Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) and is kind. Then we have the main-ish three. Dillon, Ravi, and Joe. Out of them, Joe is probably the one I relate with the most… (except for the fact that he’s tall, can’t connect), but I guess he’ll have to be my favorite character?
I very much disliked Dillon, but of course, like every bully, they have a backstory, but Nah, I still don’t like him.
Thank You For Listening!
Thank you, everyone, for listening to this week’s podcast! I appreciate it so much! I hope you guys are going to think about checking out Save me a Seat, because it’s pretty good! Anyway, folks, here’s our official Readability ending!