Unplugged by Gordon Korman (review)

Korman, Gordon Unplugged. Balzer + Bray, 2021 [336p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780062798893 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780062798916 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 4-7

Jett Baranov has played one too many destructive pranks and thereby caught the attention of his über-rich tech mogul father (and maybe even his absent do-gooder mother), who ships him off to Oasis of Mind and Body Wellness in back-of-beyond Arkansas, with a company employee as his handler. All electronics are confiscated at check-in, and guests surrender themselves to a healthy vegetarian diet, meditation, outdoor activity, soothing (or scalding, depending on your constitution) hot springs, all under the guidance of soothing (or suspicious and annoying, depending on your attitude) "pathfinders." Fellow middle schoolers at Oasis are a primetime-ready crew:a prickly girl who drinks the Oasis Kool-Aid and finds it luscious; a girl who knows a little too much about the inner workings of Oasis; a decent, normal boy, plagued with allergies. Jett empties his bag of tricks in attempt to get thrown out, then resentfully accepts the inevitable, then actually finds some common interest with his agemates in clandestinely raising a lizard they're keeping in a storage shed in violation of Oasis's no-pets policy. Much at Oasis is not what it seems, however: not the lizard, not the center's most beloved pathfinder, and most certainly not the meditation sessions. This is Korman at his most reliable, packing in the antics, reeling off comic barbs from his endearingly abrasive protagonist, mixing in mystery, and drawing bright lines between characters who are quirky, bratty, and flat-out criminal. With a subplot involving exploited animals and some major adult felony, this could lead readers on to vintage Carl Hiaasen.