| |  | Books : The House of the Scorpion |  | | | | | | | | | |
Our Price: $9.99
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Availability:Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780689852237
ISBN: 0689852231
Label: Simon Pulse
Manufacturer: Simon Pulse
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: April 27, 2004
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Reading Level: Young Adult
Sales Rank: 10808
Studio: Simon Pulse
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
MATTEO ALACRáN WAS NOT BORN; HE WAS HARVESTED.
His DNA came from El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium -- a strip of poppy fields lying between the United States and what was once called Mexico. Matt's first cell split and divided inside a petri dish. Then he was placed in the womb of a cow, where he continued the miraculous journey from embryo to fetus to baby. He is a boy now, but most consider him a monster -- except for El Patrón. El Patrón loves Matt as he loves himself, because Matt is himself.
As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister cast of characters, including El Patrón's power-hungry family, and he is surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards. Escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But escape from the Alacrán Estate is no guarantee of freedom, because Matt is marked by his difference in ways he doesn't even suspect.
Amazon.com Review:
Fields of white opium poppies stretch away over the hills, and uniformed workers bend over the rows, harvesting the juice. This is the empire of Matteo Alacran, a feudal drug lord in the country of Opium, which lies between the United States and Aztlan, formerly Mexico. Field work, or any menial tasks, are done by 'eejits,' humans in whose brains computer chips have been installed to insure docility. Alacran, or El Patron, has lived 140 years with the help of transplants from a series of clones, a common practice among rich men in this world. The intelligence of clones is usually destroyed at birth, but Matt, the latest of Alacran's doubles, has been spared because he belongs to El Patron. He grows up in the family's mansion, alternately caged and despised as an animal and pampered and educated as El Patron's favorite. Gradually he realizes the fate that is in store for him, and with the help of Tam Lin, his bluff and kind Scottish bodyguard, he escapes to Aztlan. There he and other 'lost children' are trapped in a more subtle kind of slavery before Matt can return to Opium to take his rightful place and transform his country.
Nancy Farmer, a two-time Newbery honoree, surpasses even her marvelous novel, The Ear, The Eye and the Arm in the breathless action and fascinating characters of The House of the Scorpion. Readers will be reminded of Orson Scott Card's Ender in Matt's persistence and courage in the face of a world that intends to use him for its own purposes, and of Louis Sachar's Holes in the camaraderie of imprisoned boys and the layers of meaning embedded in this irresistibly compelling story. (Ages 12 and older) --Patty Campbell
Customer Reviews Average Rating: 
Rating:  - I didn't get it
I truly do appreciate this book. I truly do. Nancy Farmer has a gift for creativity and I'm in love with the way she makes a blend of culture, sci-fi, and morality. This is a complex and thought-provoking novel, written quite well.
That said, I still did not like it.
It's dark, severe, grating, and hard-to-swallow. Which works well for many a book, but I'm afraid that it only made the end of this book all the more cheesy. And this is one top of the bizarre family connections. ... Read More
Rating: - The House of The Scorpion
I made Scorpion part of my advanced summer reading program because of its description and the awards it has won. The story is about the life of a boy who is a clone of a drug-lord. I think the book won the awards for the issues it raises such as morality, cloning, and prejudice rather then the quality of story or writing. I found the characters uninteresting especially the dialog. The writing did not transport me to this foreign location and time period. Overall I found the book a chore to complete. I recommend ... Read More
Rating:  - A nice break from heavy
This was a nice one, a fast, easy, interesting read that I got to after reading a few heavy, slow-moving books.When it's taken me a week to read each of the last two books, I really need a one-day read as a pick-me-up, and that's what this was.The House of the Scorpion is a very interesting little dystopia: the drug lords of Mexico, led by one Matteo Alacran, managed to swing a deal with the US and Mexico whereby they were given the area around the border between the two countries as their own sovereign territory; ... Read More
Rating: - my critique
at the end of my freshman year of highschool we had to clean out our lockers.this book had been on our required reading list so many kids had bought it.i must have picked up 6 copies that were about to be trashed...my plan was to sell them on ebay **sigh**.
anyways...im not going to be boring and tell you what happens, because there are 31 boring pages of reviews that do that.and im not going to try and imitate book reviewers like all these other people did.so, read the classic phrases, like, "page ... Read More
Rating:  - Amazing book for even the most conservative readers
This book is simply amazing--fluidly well told, with none of the typical "coming of age" tawdry sexualization, no offensive language, just an interesting take on contemporary issues.The realistic characters and well-paced story make this book worthy of all the awards it garnered.Buy your kid this book--then read it yourself!
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