Ungifted: The Gifted Version
by Malcolm Gaynor
Donavan Curtis never
expected to receive the gifted letter. He especially never expected it to
happen because of one of his notorious pranks, a prank that seemed worthy of
multiple detentions, or even a suspension. When the district administrator
absent mindedly jots the trouble maker’s name on the list of new gifted kids,
Donavan crash-lands in a place that he doesn’t belong: The Academy for
Scholastic Distinction. He realizes that the only way to hide from his
punishment is to go where nobody would ever look: the gifted program.
Donavan’s first
impression with the students was that he clearly didn’t fit in. The students
picked up on the fact that he wasn’t gifted, and that he didn’t belong there,
but the teachers decided to give it some time. Donavan hardly passed (or didn’t
pass) his classes, but made a bigger change to the school than all of the gifted
kids combined. Donavan thought that he was only going to survive in the ASD
(Academy for Scholastic Distinction) to avoid paying for his crime but makes
more friends and fits in at the Academy better than he ever did at his old
school.
Chloe Garfinkle, one of
the gifted kids, solves all of her problems using the scientific method. Chloe
yearns for a normal life, and instantly realizes that Donavan has what she
wants. Donavan is normal. Chloe at first is almost jealous of the ease in which
he goes about life, but soon realizes that he is smarter in many ways than all
of the other gifted students combined. He may not excel in the classroom, but
when confronted with a problem, he acts. The team at the gifted program wasn’t
a team until Donavan joined. She learns that the whole is not always a sum of
its parts. When Donavan wasn’t part of the school’s cherished robotics team,
the robot was called just that: “The Robot.” When Donovan joined, he added
nothing to the engineering except for images from Google and a name, but he
changed the program drastically.
Ungifted by Gordon Korman reveals a unique perspective of an
ungifted student working alongside students with the highest IQs of the state. It
shows the change in characters after meeting Donavan and before meeting
Donavan, showing that even if somebody doesn’t seem smart, it doesn’t mean that
they aren’t good people. The Academy students grew more than anybody could have
predicted in one year because of Donavan, the normal student, showing the
gifted kids how to really live. Ungifted
teaches kids that nobody is truly ungifted, no matter what their grades are,
and that school isn’t everything in life. People still need to make time to
have fun. When somebody that at first seems ungifted joins the gifted squad, he
teaches the gifted kids more than they have ever learned in the classroom. While
their IQs hadn’t gained any points, they learned how to solve real life
problems and make friends, things that were not important to them in the past.
Ungifted: The
Gifted Version
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