Avalon High never should had been a movie

     I had wanted to wait till the class had finished discussing the entire book before I did my typical rants to prevent any spoilers.  I believe that Meg Cabot was cleaver in her attempt to interest the younger reader – hormonal teenage girls.
     Coming from a high school that closely resembles the activities of Avalon High, including the crazy guy who wants to kill someone, I find the book disturbing.  I don't agree with some things that she assimilates with stereotypes.  One in particular that if you have piercings, tattoos, it automatically makes someone a drug addict.  All though, I find it would be financially beneficial for the government to legalize weed, I am not a drug addict.  I also fit into that "jock" stereotype in high school and I was a bit confused by the football game scene.  Was Lance substituted in for the play Will was leveled?  Or was he so lost in Jenny’s eyes he walked off the field before the play even started, but then how did no one notice he was missing, especially will.  Either or, speaking from experience, if that would ever to happen, and if Lance was still on the team the next practice, he would be put through the work out of his life.  I don't think that she fully understood the game of football to accurately describe a play in which Lance is not on the field.
     While reading this book I tried to read this as if I was still in grade school and even in my younger mind, I still would have thought Elaine running in the storm of the century was odd.  There had to have been at least one person that was driving by or even looking out their window as she ran by and though "hmmmm high school girl, running in the rain, with no rain coat, except the only one trying to conceal something.  That is a little odd".  My biggest fear is thunder storms, so my skin was crawling with the idea someone is so idiotic to be running two miles in a storm with a lighting conductor.  I was hoping she would be struck and that's how the book ended to be honest.
     As I said in class, Marco should had shot will and Elaine seconds after showing he had a gun.  This type of a bad guy to spill the entire plan to the potential victims, then turn it around and the victims defeat the bad guy is very cliché.  Even in my high school mind, I wanted Marco to be done with it.  I just did not like the transition between Marco pulling out the gun, Elaine throwing the sword, and then Marco giving up.
      In my last blog I talked about the potential sword vs. gun scenario.  So as it is quite obvious I am a bit agitated that a sword was brought to a gun fight, and actually won.  I would have to admit though that through all the reasons for me to be upset, Meg Cabot did what I believe she wanted to do.  She wanted to talk about the Arthur story in a way that people today can relate to.  
     I did enjoy the partially factual stuff in the back of the book, but I do not know how many kids would actually turn the pages to actually read this part of the book.  I thought maybe she should have put this in the beginning of the book, but kids skip that part too.  At first I didn't pick up on The Lady of Shallot in the beginning of each chapter, but once Dr. MB pointed it out it still didn't make a difference.  I had read them, and then proceeded to read the chapter and completely forgetting what part of the poem she thought was related to the text.  It might have behooved her to write parts of the poem and a chapter title, not just part of the poem.