Book Review

David C. Hall
EDCI 4120/5120
Powell, R. (2001). Run if you dare. New York: Ferrar Straus Giroux.
Grade Levels: 7-9
Category: Realistic fiction
Read-Alouds: pp. 43-59 (Chapters 8 and 9); 91-104 (Chapters 15 and 16); 157-181 (Chapters 23 through 25)
Summary: Gardner Dickinson in fourteen and wandering through life; he starts a lot of things, like books and projects, but he never finishes anything. His father is out of work and playing golf; he too, has trouble finishing anything, whether it is cleaning the garage or finding another job. His mother works long hours to hold the family together, and his sister is dating her boss at the pizza joint where she works. Tentatively, Gardner starts to take up some physical challenges, like chopping wood and running after school. He starts to earn some money for the fire wood, and some self respect. Instead of starting a book and abandoning it, he starts reading them from start to finish.
Themes: Run if you Dare is a coming of age novel, portraying a young adult who, with his father, faces a listless life. This results in both of them questioning their inability to commit to something. The novel also explores the father- son relationship with the unusual twist of the son setting the example for his father. Run if you Dare offers a protagonist who comes to understand that to make something of himself will take sweat and hard work, and that in the effort is the reward.
Discussion Questions:
In Chapter 5, Gardner compares his messy bedroom, with its piles of unread books, with his father’s garage, and the piles of unread magazines, deciding that he is just “a chip off the old block”. Is Gardner rationalizing his behavior to avoid confronting some of the choices he is making?
Gardner and his friend Skeepbo have won the Lake Washington Badminton Doubles Tournament for several years in a row. Why doesn’t this success translate to Gardner having other goals, and with those, other successes in his life?
When Gardner and his dad go away for the weekend to hike Dungeness Spit, his dad reveals to him that he is thinking about abandoning the family to get away and start a new life. Why

doesn’t Gardner hate his father for considering this? What was your impression of how Gardner handled this personal and very mature conversation with his father?
Reader Response: Run if you Dare is a good young adult novel; it features a simple story with a straight-forward message. For its target audience of 7th to 9th graders, reading the novel could be cathartic, and boys in their early teens could find a great deal in the novel that connects to their real-life experiences of navigating their way through their relationship with their father and through their own early teenage years.
Run if you Dare offers young adults a story both about coming of age, and about maintaining a relationship with a father who doesn’t have all the answers—it is a novel that can help young teens understand that coping with life and finding solutions to life’s problems doesn’t end with their own physical maturity into adulthood, anymore than it has (did) for their own parents.