Mac Slater is about to fly. His friend, Paul, has their invention all cranked up and now Mac is hitting the ramp, the wing shooting up in the air like a rocket. He's flying. Actually flying. Then, smash, he's slammed into the ground. Kids run screaming. As Paul and Mac drag the "bike" home, a black Jeep Commander pulls up beside them. The cool guy with the black spiky hair who is sitting in that Jeep wants a meeting. He has a Coolhunters website and he wants a contest with Mac and Paul versus Cat, the most popular girl in school. They'll each shoot videos for the web. They're looking for the cutting edge of cool and millions of fans will vote to decide the winner. This just might be their ticket from Australia to New York City where their future awaits. 224 pages Ages 10-14
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Cool, funny, wacky, and out of this world, Mac Slater Hunts the Cool is a great guy read for reluctant readers. Mac is a teen inventor and nerd-y geek. He and his friend Paul are trying to develop a bicycle that can fly. The opening chapter has Mac taking the fall -- literally!
When he is approached by two stangers named Tony and Speed, website developers of "Coolhunters" from the Internet, he declines their invitation to go around his Kings Bay (his hometown) with a video camera filming "hunting the cool”. Paul is already mad at him, feeling that Mac is leaving him out, but when mean girl and fellow cool hunter Cat begins to tease Mac and bully him, he begs friend Paul to help him beat her.
They have one week to upset Cat and her minions of evil, popular followers. The Internet can be a funny thing -- no telling if someone is following your blog because it's really "cool" or whether they are following it to find out how weird you are. It doesn't matter to Mac and Paul -- they enlist the help of Mac's hippie lightning farm inventor father and film lightning hitting metal rods during a storm. Their followers can't figure out if they are geeks or revolutionaries!
For every geek, nerd, underdog, and inventor wannabe, this book is for you! You will believe that bicycles can fly!
Highly recommended grades 6-up and reluctant readers!
Recommended by Pamela Thompson, MLIS, Library Media Specialist, Texas
visit my her novels blog at https://booksbypamelathompson.blogspot.com/
*now a featured blog on the Texas Library Association's homepage at https://www.txla.org/TLA-blog
