Five Flavors of Dumb

My TakeThe book was great. It was fun, honest, and had some clever moments in the story that made me squeal! I could feel Piper's emotions from when she was dealing with the band and with her family. I could identify with Piper on some of the things she goes through when I was in high school. She is such a tough cookie who takes on such a challenge considering she's deaf. I liked that about her. Piper works hard and finds herself speaking up more than she has before. She also makes friends with some of the band members.This story also covers music and how can a high school band make it to getting known. I loved how the band has its up and downs in various events. It seemed to me it was all about self discovery for each character in this book which I loved. Each character realizes something and brings the whole story together.I loved how certain types of music is mentioned in the book and that Piper's dad joins in on the music scene just a bit. It gives you an idea how teens relate to music. I loved how Piper learns a bit of the music scene as well. Music had its way in this book for so many people. It made some relate to each other and some did not.There is a bit of love interest with Piper and another character called Ed which was cute. That all it seemed to me was cute. I liked how Ed finally tells Piper that he's crushing on her big time. It takes guts to tell someone that! It was a cute romance.If you are looking for something to read then this book is for you! Give it a shot.Cover: AStory: B

Also appears on The Screaming Nitpicker.After mouthing off to her high school's "it" band Dumb, Piper is stuck being their manager and has one month to get them a paying gig. She doesn't want to do it, but her parents raided her college fund to pay for an operation for her sister and Piper needs money. However, it's going to take a lot of work to turn Dumb into a commercial band. Between recruiting new members (one of whom lacks any talent), keeping the five flavors of Dumb from killing each other, pulling some cunning tricks to get Dumb places, fighting and making up with her family, and learning what music's all about, Piper has a lot on her plate. She can handle it. Well, she can if people will stop using her deafness as an excuse why she can't handle it.I have heard nothing but praise for this book and was dying to get my paws on it and read it. That praise? Yeah, it is all deserved. This book is so good that it gave me the strong urge to cut my hair and dye it Atomic Pink.It's not everyday you see characterization this strong in a young adult novel anymore. Get this: For once, the characters are deeper than puddles! Piper, as our heroine, is not perfect. She isn't always nice, she tricks people many times, and she provokes people more than once. She's also cunning, good at finding loopholes, and comes to see the band as more than a way to make money. Instead of her deafness characterizing her and being a disability, it's just another part of her. In fact, the abilities of lip-reading and signing that she gained because of her "disability" turn out to be valuable assets that help Dumb get ahead. She is deaf, but deaf is not her.But the real star of this novel? That would be Kallie Sims, the "perfect girl" deconstructed. Initially, Piper dislikes her for being so perfect and as the novel goes on, the reader discovers that Kallie isn't perfect; she's a girl just like Piper. Kallie has a not-so-ideal home life, her fashionable clothes (that are bought with her mother's employee discount) get made fun of by her "friends" for being last season, and while she loves music with all her heart and connects with it in a way few people do, she can't play an instrument to save her life. This perfect girl is as imperfect as everyone else and even when she takes center stage late in the novel, she is still just a girl. I love Kallie. I'd love to see a sequel one day through her point of view.Other characters, like angry green-haired guitarist Tash and Piper's music-loving brother/translator Finn, get their touches of depth too. Even Piper's parents get some depth! How often are the parents more than just background characters like this? The scenes where Piper fought with her dad or exhibited jealousy towards her baby sister Grace genuinely tugged at my heart strings. In fact, this had to be one of the most "real" novels I've ever read. Everything about it, from Piper's discovery of what music is about and who she is to the fight she has with her family to the fight the band has among themselves, felt so real to me.Five Flavors of Dumb also gave me the worst case of novel whiplash I've ever had. On one page, I would be laughing so hard (my favorite quote came off page two and to preserve the magic, I will not speak of it) that I was given strange looks by other people if I was reading in public; in a few more pages, I would be ready to bawl like a baby because of any particular scene I found heart-wrenching. My poor Mom thought I was having mood swings! And keep in mind, of course, that I'm not an emotional reader. If I weren't so lazy, I would make a "made me cry" and "made me laugh" tag so people could see just how rare it gets.Five Flavors of Dumb is now one of my favorite books of all time and I don't slap that label on books lightly. Only four other books have that title and this one right here is number five. I recommend this book to absolutely anyone. As long as you don't hate music (especially rock music), I think you'll enjoy Five Flavors of Dumb.

Wow. Like OMG wow. This book just made it on my favorites list. It's got to be one of them best contemporary books I've ever read. I don't think I have a single complaint.I love how this book was done. It's about a girl who takes on managing a band and she's deaf. And while we see the obstacles she has to face, the difficulties in being deaf, it's not all about that. That's just a small part of the whole thing. And I loved it like that. I loved reading about a deaf girl and her life without it being all about her being deaf. She did have some family issues to deal with and they were done so well. I really felt for Piper but yet saw both sides of the story. But the main issue in the book was her managing the band, Dumb. It's also about her finding herself, her inner strength and her kick butt attitude she's somehow had inside herself all these years. Piper was a true authentic character who I could understand and feel true compassion for. I could go on and on but really the only way you'll understand Piper is if you read the book.The other characters were fabulous as well. Ed was a great friend and I loved how he would do anything for Piper. I also loved the touch of romance without it being a big theme in the book. Josh was a character that did a great job of infuriating me and the other band members each played their roles perfectly. I loved them all and how they all found themselves.This book truly has so much going for it but one of my favorite things was Piper learning more about music. This being going to the house Kurt Cobain lived and died in, seeing Jimi Hendrix's childhood home, watching them on videos and reading up about them. Although Piper can't hear music most of the time (she has a tiny bit of limited hearing) she can feel it, and she can see it. She can see the emotions and feelings and everything that's going on in their movements and expressions. And since I was a huge Kurt Cobain fan and pretty much watched every video he ever did like 100 times, visited his house and every monument that's been done for him, well, I appreciated that bit of the story and it even made me cry a bit. What other characters said to Piper about Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix were some amazing words. And I loved that even though she couldn't appreciate their music herself, she could appreciate that others did and she cared enough to do her own research and find out more and see what a true musicians goals are. It's not about the money. It's about the music.This book was so amazingly well rounded I didn't have one moment I wanted to put the book down. I actually picked the book up when I was feeling blah. No book sounded good but I was determined to kick that blah right out of me. And once I started this book that blah was gone. I could have sat and read the book in one sitting it was so good. Not a single moment of boring.I think I could go on and on about how much loved this book. But really you just have to read it for yourself. What are you still sitting there for? Go buy it!

I completely loved this book and read it in a day. There was just so much that appealed to me, from Piper's voice to the music references peppered throughout. It had me written all over it.Let's start off with Piper: yes, she does realise the irony of her name. She's smart and a little bit meek at the start but, boy, she didn't half grow into an awesome self-assured chick by the end. She is the sort of person I'd love to be friends with. She's understandably angry at her parents for spending some of her college fund, given to her by her deaf grandparents, on her sister Grace's cochlear implants, even though Grace's deafness is far more severe, and hit her at a far younger age, than Piper's. But Piper was not solely characterised by her deafness, it was just one part of her. Take the fact that she is deaf away and Piper would still be a well rounded, well written character.The five flavours of Dumb, the band members, were a little bit of a mixed bag. Josh and Will, rich brothers and singer and bass player respectively, were a little bit under-developed. Will was portrayed as the silent type, interested only in music, and Josh was cast as the villain of the piece. Not a lot else was discovered. Ed, drummer and Piper's chess partner, was slightly more fleshed out by the end but I still felt more could be done with him nearer the start. Tash and Kallie, good at guitar and bad at guitar, were treated much better in terms of story, and I liked their development and clashing personalities.The best thing though? Piper's parents were present throughout the novel. All too often in YA, contemporary or otherwise, the parents are non-existent, be they dead or workaholics. Here, not only were they present but they had their own character development and growth. I could understand their reasoning for wanting Grace to have cochlear implants, to give her a better chance at life, even though Piper firmly believed that being deaf is not a disability. By doing this, they knowingly alienated their elder daughter who already felt a bit removed from them and her brother. It was a hard decision and clearly not one they took lightly. I often got the impression that they were still not sure it was the correct decision to make.I picked on a few character development issues above, particularly regarding Josh and Will, but they could easily be explained away by the narrative, which was in first person from Piper's POV. She didn't know everything about them and therefore we didn't get to know everything about them. And the more I think about it, the more I'm fine with that. Yes, it would have been nice to know their inner workings like we did with Piper, Kallie, Tash and eventually Ed, but I didn't feel it detracted enough from the story as a whole.Antony John has written a book that I have fell in love with and I expect I'll read a lot more of his books in years to come. Definitely a top ten book of this year.

Really excellent story - great for teens and pre-teens. My daughter loved. Antony John is an excellent author.

i have not received it yet