Slacker

Gordon Korman's Slacker is a comedy for 10 year olds about a boy so far inside a video game that he doesn't notice the fire brigade arriving at his house.

What happens

Cameron Boxer is thirteen and has a plan for his life. The plan is the basement, the couch, the headset and his friends, and as little of everything else as he can manage.

His mum comes to the top of the stairs and says something about a pasta bake in the oven and ten minutes. What Cam hears is blah, blah, blah.

An hour later firefighters are on the lawn and one of them has taken an axe to the front door.

Nothing burned except the dinner. But the door was a funny size, so it'll be a month before a new one arrives, and for that month the family goes in and out the back.

His parents give him a deadline. Find one interest that involves actual people and isn't on a screen, before the new door turns up, or the console goes.

Cam is horrified. There's a gaming championship coming in November with ten thousand dollars for the winning pair, and he's been training for months.

What he doesn't see coming is what happens when his solution works too well, which is where the book really gets going.

The voice is the reason to read it. Cam is completely certain he's the reasonable one. He argues that video games are his lifestyle and his parents' furniture shop is theirs, and that he's polite enough not to criticise theirs. He tells his mum that taking the food out and turning off the oven is two things, not one.

The story also hands the narration round. You get Cam, then his friend Pavel, then other people at school, and each one thinks something completely different is happening. Watching the same events from several sets of eyes is very funny and it's a nice way in for a reader who's only ever read one narrator at a time.

It's American and it's school-set, so there's eighth grade and a principal and dollars. Cam being thirteen means the jokes sit a little older, but only a little, and the trouble he causes is the low-stakes kind.

What to read next

If they enjoy the sheer nerve of Cam, try Gordon Korman's Unplugged. A tech billionaire's son is dropped in the Arkansas woods, has his phone taken off him and is handed a plate of health food, and he takes it about as well as you'd expect.