Test of Time: A Novel Approach to the SAT and ACT (Harvest Original)
Grade 8 Up–Flashing back and forth between the present and late-19th-century Connecticut,Test of Timestars Mark Twain, whoseHuckleberry Finnmanuscript mysteriously vanishes into thin air from his desk, only to be replaced with the laptop computer belonging to modern-day university student Orlando Ortiz. Such an intriguing plot twist could potentially evolve into a quirky, suspenseful time-travel mystery in which Orlando and Twain devise a plan to retrieve their respective belongings. But the book also hopes to serve as a learning tool for the verbal portions of standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT. Unfortunately, readers get bogged down not only by a flat narrative, but also by oddly placed, boldface vocabulary words embedded into the text. These test words, which repeatedly number well over a dozen per page, render the novel virtually unreadable and negate the attempt to promote vocabulary improvement through pleasure reading. Often three to five bold words are lumped into a single sentence, which could hamper readers' ability to deduce definitions from their context. And even though there is some interestingly believable teen speak scattered throughout, the book will still take almost as much work to get through as the usual SAT or ACT study manuals.–Hillias J. Martin, New York Public LibraryCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.