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Run If You Dare
Gardner Dickinson's life -- like his room -- is a mess. He checks books out of the library, but never reads them. He talks about getting into shape but goofs off instead. His family is falling apart. His mom is working all the time to pay the bills, while his father is losing it. Out of work for months, his dad spends his time playing golf or holed up in the garage with magazines. And he confides in Gardner things that a father has no right to tell a son. Can Gardner get up off his rear end and turn his life around? This title is an Accelerated Reader® Title
- GenresYoung Adult
215 pages, Hardcover
First published April 13, 2001
4 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Randy Powell
19 books7 followersI've lived in Seattle all my life -- since 1956. I live here now with my wife, Judy, and our two sons, Eli and Drew. I like the outdoors, books, fresh crab and raw oysters, and rain.
As a kid, I was crazy about sports. All sports. When I wasn't playing the real thing, I was playing some imaginary form of it. I wasn't a great athlete, just obsessed. I peaked when I was eleven. Our little league football team won the city championship, and the coach gave me the game ball. I lost that ball a few years later. I'm still looking for it.
I had fun reading and writing. When I found a book I liked, I threw myself into it, into the main character's skin. I'd try to write in the author's style. Writing was hard work, but what a rush it gave me, coming up with the right phrase, finishing a piece and feeling it click, reading it to the class and getting some laughs.
In high school, in the early 1970s, my hero was Arthur Ashe, the tennis pro. I concentrated on tennis and worked hard at it, but not hard enough. Today it's still my game of choice, and I still don't work hard enough.
High school is also where I became serious about writing. I became even more so in college, at the University of Washington. I made two trips to Europe, worked summers in Alaska as a deckhand on a fishing boat, and wrote short stories, novels, and even formula romances.
After college, I got a job teaching at an alternative school for junior high and high school dropouts. I taught for four years and loved it, but finally left because it ate up my writing time.
My breakthrough in writing came when I learned to look inside myself and write about the things I cared and felt deeply about. I guess it was only natural that my first published novel, "My Underrated Year", should be about a high school football and tennis player. Yes, there's a lot of myself in that book, although hardly any of the incidents actually happened. That's true of my other books as well.
I enjoy visiting schools and talking to students about writing. I also love hearing from readers. You can write to me in care of my publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I promise I'll write back!
As a kid, I was crazy about sports. All sports. When I wasn't playing the real thing, I was playing some imaginary form of it. I wasn't a great athlete, just obsessed. I peaked when I was eleven. Our little league football team won the city championship, and the coach gave me the game ball. I lost that ball a few years later. I'm still looking for it.
I had fun reading and writing. When I found a book I liked, I threw myself into it, into the main character's skin. I'd try to write in the author's style. Writing was hard work, but what a rush it gave me, coming up with the right phrase, finishing a piece and feeling it click, reading it to the class and getting some laughs.
In high school, in the early 1970s, my hero was Arthur Ashe, the tennis pro. I concentrated on tennis and worked hard at it, but not hard enough. Today it's still my game of choice, and I still don't work hard enough.
High school is also where I became serious about writing. I became even more so in college, at the University of Washington. I made two trips to Europe, worked summers in Alaska as a deckhand on a fishing boat, and wrote short stories, novels, and even formula romances.
After college, I got a job teaching at an alternative school for junior high and high school dropouts. I taught for four years and loved it, but finally left because it ate up my writing time.
My breakthrough in writing came when I learned to look inside myself and write about the things I cared and felt deeply about. I guess it was only natural that my first published novel, "My Underrated Year", should be about a high school football and tennis player. Yes, there's a lot of myself in that book, although hardly any of the incidents actually happened. That's true of my other books as well.
I enjoy visiting schools and talking to students about writing. I also love hearing from readers. You can write to me in care of my publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I promise I'll write back!
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 10, 2014
This book had all of the elements of a story that I find to be dull: golf, teenage boys checking out teenage girls, teenagers "rediscoverying their potential," father-son stories, and the nice nuclear family going through hard times. Bleah.
This story is about a Gardner, a boy who does nothing with himself all day, and is disappointed in his own lack of interest in all topics from exercise to reading his impossible stacks of library books. On the side, his father is going through a mid-life crisis, and plays profusive amounts of golf while making feeble attempts to find a job in yet another month of unemployment. And then, from the out of the blue comes a girl named Annie, who mysteriously turned beautiful and sexy since moving from Gardner's town, but has since moved back. However, Gardner only hangs around the edges of Annie's perception and waits in a line of boys that wants to go out with Annie.
I figured that the story would somehow pick up (this hope grew feebler as I made it halfway through book), but it never does. It is intensely dull the whole way through with a message of "don't wait for your life to pick up, just seize the day!" I could find better prose in a rap song on the radio.
This story is about a Gardner, a boy who does nothing with himself all day, and is disappointed in his own lack of interest in all topics from exercise to reading his impossible stacks of library books. On the side, his father is going through a mid-life crisis, and plays profusive amounts of golf while making feeble attempts to find a job in yet another month of unemployment. And then, from the out of the blue comes a girl named Annie, who mysteriously turned beautiful and sexy since moving from Gardner's town, but has since moved back. However, Gardner only hangs around the edges of Annie's perception and waits in a line of boys that wants to go out with Annie.
I figured that the story would somehow pick up (this hope grew feebler as I made it halfway through book), but it never does. It is intensely dull the whole way through with a message of "don't wait for your life to pick up, just seize the day!" I could find better prose in a rap song on the radio.
July 22, 2017
"You and Dad both have a problem in the focusing and following-through departments ... you come up with a new delusion every week but you don't act on a single one."
Gardner wants to change his ways: become more goal oriented and follow through on his ideas. After he sees his father struggle with being unemployed and not being motivated to find another, Gardner realizes that life requires a little effort and a lot of heart.
Gardner wants to change his ways: become more goal oriented and follow through on his ideas. After he sees his father struggle with being unemployed and not being motivated to find another, Gardner realizes that life requires a little effort and a lot of heart.
October 23, 2017
This book wasn't very good, because it skipped around a lot.
January 22, 2018
This book had a lot of good parts descriptive and very informational this book was so good i actually took it home and read there were parts i didn't like but others that i did.
September 19, 2014
Gardner Dickinson was once a boy destined to become intelligent and prosperous, so was the rest of his entire family. Somewhere falls a love and hate realization for this youth who suddenly felt misguided, and so continues to be the realizer in the farces that his father poses, his father had been coming too close on the brink, extremely too far on the end of his rope. His father wasn’t thinking rationally like other adults. In fact, although it has always been a sophisticated life for Gardner. Gardner Dickinson remembers vacations and all the usual things he did with his dad. Then. Now Gardner sees his father who actually owes him some dignity, becoming only to be all too visible, to be not only his father but his father from too far away and was simply falling into his midlife rut. At this point, in this crisis Gardner saw his possible embarrassment, which his father represents, from what he could foretell was his father becoming just old and useless and slightly eccentric about golf. It was a feeling of getting into everyone’s way. This is surprisingly written for mature youths or something, and tells a story from the coming of age of a fourteen year old boy, so read it in your spare time, and like it because it stands out for its exceptional powerful story.
March 22, 2013
This dramatic book will have fans thinking. We've all experianced being determined to go somewhere and do something in life,but thinks don't always go as planned. The book illustrates this, making this drama both real and appealing.
In Gardeners home keeping to yourself is normal. So his father spending money he doesn't have, mother working a seasonal job living paycheck to paycheck, and a sister who is sassy and is disappointed in her father. Then there is the main character, Gardener, who doesn't know how to feel, but really wants to just run away with what her got out of life already.
He lives in Seattle, where jobs are avalible, but his father hasn't attempted to even look for a job. The title of the book also come around at the end of the book when he is with his father in the rain and trys to tell him to run and not to look back becuase he isn't getting anything else accomplished. His father actually comes back with a job instead of running off. His mother has tried throughout the entire book to support her husband but isnt sure if she can anymore because of his contant spending. The sister Lacy can't take her father being so lazy. They family doesn't really agree on everyone choices, but eventually just push it off.
In Gardeners home keeping to yourself is normal. So his father spending money he doesn't have, mother working a seasonal job living paycheck to paycheck, and a sister who is sassy and is disappointed in her father. Then there is the main character, Gardener, who doesn't know how to feel, but really wants to just run away with what her got out of life already.
He lives in Seattle, where jobs are avalible, but his father hasn't attempted to even look for a job. The title of the book also come around at the end of the book when he is with his father in the rain and trys to tell him to run and not to look back becuase he isn't getting anything else accomplished. His father actually comes back with a job instead of running off. His mother has tried throughout the entire book to support her husband but isnt sure if she can anymore because of his contant spending. The sister Lacy can't take her father being so lazy. They family doesn't really agree on everyone choices, but eventually just push it off.
October 15, 2014
The book Run If You Dare by Randy Powell was about a boy by the name of Gardner who wanted to be very successful growing up but found it nearly impossible because his father was having a midlife crisis who had just lost his job. He had no one to look up to for advice. I found this book rather boring. It was to much about everyday life for many people. I found it boring because it seemed as if the only things that happened were negative aspects in Gardner’s life. When I read a book, I want it to be full of action and adventure.
Gardner’s father wants to run away and leave his whole family behind so he can start a new life. He said living where he is, is like long term suicide. This was the most exciting part of the book because there was so much tension between the father and son. while reading this, I made a few connections to my own life.
As I got deeper and deeper into the book, I was expecting it to become more exciting but it never happened. It stayed the same the whole way through and never changed levels of excitement. If someone was looking for a book to read about everyday life situations, I would recommend this book.
Gardner’s father wants to run away and leave his whole family behind so he can start a new life. He said living where he is, is like long term suicide. This was the most exciting part of the book because there was so much tension between the father and son. while reading this, I made a few connections to my own life.
As I got deeper and deeper into the book, I was expecting it to become more exciting but it never happened. It stayed the same the whole way through and never changed levels of excitement. If someone was looking for a book to read about everyday life situations, I would recommend this book.
Currently reading
October 14, 2011This book Run If You Dare, is for people who love to read just to read. I state this because there is no type of entertainment happens in this book at all it has all the elements of a boring story. The main character is a teenage boy who loves to read like his father and play golf. Please tell me the fun in him. The one thing I can say good about this boy is the dad is pretty funny to me. Maybe because I find corny people funny. But other than him in this book the book is just terrible. I really wish I choice a different book because I can't even keep my eyes open when I'm suppose to be reading in class. The cover is wonderful caught my eye very well but the story is a big let down.
October 16, 2013
Are you one of those people whom action doesn't excite them? Do you need real relatable literature? Then "Run if you Dare" is the book for you. It is about an average American fourteen year old boy named Gardner and his struggles in his home and social life when his dad enters a deep depression. While reading this, I made a ton of connections to my own life. Whether it's trying out for sports, talking to girls, school, family life, or just hanging out with your best friend, you will find something to relate to in this book. I suggest picking up this book and exploring Randy Powell's incredible insight on the life of the average fourteen year old boy.
April 13, 2011
This book started out great, but as it went on and on it kept introducing more new topics. These topics near the end never really filled out and i cant believe i just wasted my time reading it, Its like watching the first 15 mins of a really interesting 30 min tv show and then leaving it and never finding out what happened
January 6, 2013
A young adult story about a high school kid dealing with the fact that his dad has been unemployed for months and doesn't seem to be doing anything about it.
I liked this book. I really liked the characters and the main character's search to figure out who he is in general and in relation to his dad. I thought it was kind of inspiring and fun to read.
I liked this book. I really liked the characters and the main character's search to figure out who he is in general and in relation to his dad. I thought it was kind of inspiring and fun to read.
July 22, 2016
I would even rate it 6/5 !!!
I will always look at this book as an actual savior because I was so desperate, bored, and in the gloomiest mood but this book kept me entertained and made me laugh my butt off. xD
I will always look at this book as an actual savior because I was so desperate, bored, and in the gloomiest mood but this book kept me entertained and made me laugh my butt off. xD
June 16, 2012
I can't imagine a teen liking this book. There were a few scenes that were interesting, but overall the characters were undeveloped and unlikable.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews