1 out of 4 stars
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An Adventurous Summer Vacation is a short story by Krahtay Gaylah. The story describes the adventures of the Herman family when they visited their grandparents for the summer vacation. The three cousins, Markie, Ryan, and Kara travel to the Duster Village Water Park in Dallas, the Nature Plaza Park in Seattle, and the Rocket Planet Space Center in Austin with their parents and grandparents. Along the way, the children befriend Max, a friendly bulldog. They also learn new things about volcanoes, rockets, and space exploration. They also explored possible occupations that interest them.
This book was very difficult for me to read. The writing did not flow well and was choppy at times. Some sentences were also strangely phrased, such as, ‘Further, walking in a fast pace and slowing down at some point, while making hand gestures to give brief history of some other things; Justin took us inside.’ It occurred to me that the author’s first language may not be English and this could have been the reason for the strangely written sentences.
In addition, the majority of the book consisted of meaningless dialogue that did not add value to the story. There were numerous mentions of, “Hmmm,” and “Uh-huh.” In addition, some incidents were also insignificant, such as the exact measurements of rooms and people’s heights. There was also one instance where the author used four sentences to describe the reason for sneezing.
However, the main issue I had with this book was the number of errors it contained. Reading this book became a chore and it was honestly a very frustrating experience because the errors distracted me from the story. Some examples of the errors which I noticed were wrongfully used words, lack of question marks at the end of sentences, use of capital letters where there should be common letters, lack of articles in some sentences, and incorrect spelling of some words.
Despite this, I liked the educational facts in the book. There were facts pertaining to volcanoes and space travel which would appeal to young science fans. Another positive thing about this story was that it contained a good lesson for young readers - to keep focused on your dreams and to keep working hard to achieve them, despite the challenges that may occur.
Unfortunately, these aspects were overshadowed by the poor writing and the multitude of errors. Therefore, I rate it 1 out of 4 stars. This book has the potential to be enjoyed by teenagers, but I would strongly recommend that it undergoes professional editing.
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An Adventurous Summer Vacation
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