In a Flash

by Eric Walters

The first flash mob Ian puts together himself is a sixty-plus person, four-minute pillow fight in a department store. His friend Oswald is thrilled with the event, but Julia, the one Ian really wants to impress, is still convinced that flash mobs are stupid. While Ian tries to prove Julia wrong by initiating flash mobs with political impact, Julia is busy waging war with the strict new principal at school. When Julia goes too far and gets herself suspended, Ian sees an opportunity for a relevant and persuasive flash mob.

Genres: Young Adult, Fiction

108 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Eric was born in Toronto in 1957, which makes him "real old". But, as Eric says, "Just because I have to grow old doesn't mean that I have to grow up!" In his many roles as parent, teacher, social worker, youth sports coach and writer he is in constant contact with children and young adults. He draws from these experiences and feels that this helps him to capture the realistic interaction between young people—the conflicts, tensions, stresses and interests that make up their lives.

Eric began his writing as a teacher. He taught in classes from kindergarten up and his stories often reflect the curriculum that he was teaching. He always read stories—picture books and novels—to his students and this helped him to understand what children liked, responded to, and were inspired by. He enjoys the enthusiasm of his students and often looks at them to provide him with the inspiration to pursue a particular topic in both the classroom and in his writing.

Eric tries to write every day. When he has a story idea he starts with research. This could involve reading books, watching a documentary, or trying to experience the things that his characters are going to go through. This could include rock climbing or riding white water (for Stars), spending time in a wheelchair (Rebound), playing and walking with tigers (Tiger by the Tail), hanging around a tough biker bar (Diamonds in the Rough), standing out in his backyard in a blizzard wearing a T-shirt and shorts (Trapped in Ice), or traveling to Africa (Alexandria of Africa).

"The most important thing anybody ever told me about writing was to write what you know . . . and the only way to get to know things is to do your homework and research before you write," Eric stated.

Once the writing begins the story is always playing around in his head. He takes any opportunity, even if it's just a few minutes between presentations, to put things down, either with pen and paper or on his laptop.

Prior to entering teaching and writing Eric was a social worker (B.S.W., M.S.W., B.A.Hons—specialized major psychology). He worked in a variety of settings including child welfare, private practice, a mental health centre, and, for twenty years on a part-time basis as a Crisis Social Worker in an emergency department. He stopped teaching 4 years ago and left the ER only last year.

The majority of Eric's time is spent in the company of his wife, children and dogs (Lola a big standard poodle and a little white dog named Winnie the Poodle).

Reviews

[Mstanton · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the book In a Flash by Eric Walters, the protagonist Ian is a rebellious type of character because he creates and participates in flash mobs and boycotts. This book is fiction and was published on October 1st, 2008. The claim of this book is rebellious because like I mentioned in the beginning, you can tell its a rebellious book by the actions of Ian, like all of the boycotts and flash mobs he's in and he creates. Ian is the main character and his leading trait throughout this whole story is brave. Ian shows bravery by not caring about what people say about his flash mobs and doesn't care that the principal didn't want these bad things going on anywhere near or concerning the school, but Ian didn't care. He wanted to stand up for what he believed in: Preventing smoking and allowing a dance to happen. One of the bravery things was when a friend needed him to organize the dance because they got caught and already set it up and knew what they were fighting for so Ian took over. In this book, the conflict or the problem is that Ian’s friend group puts together boycotts and flash mobs, and the problem is that they have to try to organize these and not get caught, and if they do get caught, remember what they were fighting for and keep going.
I felt this was a good book because the setting was in a school and this makes it easy to relate to. I would recommend this book to fifth or sixth graders because the setting is easier for them to relate to.

[Angel Zapata · Rating 3 out of 5]

In A Flash By Book Review by Angel Zapata
Eric Walters


*Spoiler Alert*
Did you ever have to decide whether or not you should stop a friend from doing something risky? Or think about how to stop your friend from getting into trouble? Recently, I have read a novel known as In A Flash by Eric Walters. This story is drama and has adds lots of tension between a group of old friends.
In the beginning of the story, you are introduced to a trio of friends named Ian, Oswald, and Julia who enjoy organizing flash mobs and go to the same school together. However, Julia is getting tired and feels that flash mobs are unnecessary, so Ian tries to change Julia’s opinion by coming up with a flash mob that will impress her. While Ian is coming up with ideas for his flash mob, a new, stricter principal decides to cancel an anticipated school dance, which causes Julia to become furious since she was looking forward towards the dance. In order make the new school principal pay for canceling the school dance, Julia creates an organization online and tries to persuade the entire school to boycott school in order to make the new principal rearrange the school dance again. After finding out what Julia has done, Ian decides to stop Julia from convincing the entire school to skip school by setting up a flash mob in order to persuade school students from boycotting school. At the end of the novel, you find out that Ian planned to have the majority of students to listen to music players with ear buds on outside of school property during lunch period. Suddenly, when the new principal comes out and is about to give Ian a detention, Ian explains to the principal that students were allowed to go off school property during lunch and listen to music off school property, therefore, Ian does not deserve a detention. After Ian’s explanation, the principal decides to announce the school dance to be rearranged again, pulls out his music player, and plays music while wearing his ear buds.
I believe that the theme of this story is friendship and morality because when Julia decided to persuade people to boycott school due to the recent cancellation of the school dance, Ian took the courage to form a flash mob that was in risk of getting him into trouble and heart to show Julia that he cares about her by stopping her from getting into trouble and restoring the arrangement of the school dance Julia was looking forward to. The author creates tension between all three of the characters when Ian finds out that Julia is persuading students to boycott school and Ian is left to decide whether or not he should stop his long-time friend from getting into a lot of trouble with the new, strict principal. The narrator’s 1st person point of view also affected the story because Ian telling this story from his point of view showed the audience how conflicted Ian felt when he tried to decide whether or not he should stop Julia from forming a boycott. Ian’s motivation to stopping Julia’s boycott comes when Ian looks back to fond memories with her and decides to not only stop Julia, but also have the principal restore the school dance by forming a flash mob that will not get Ian into any kind of trouble.
I really liked the way the author made Ian tell this drama-themed story because Ian as the narrator built lots of tension and conflict between long-lasting relationship between a trio of friends that felt very serious and suspenseful. An interesting thing I learned from this book was that when Ian decided to stop Julia’s actions and restore the arrangement of the school dance, when I thought Ian was going to confront the school principal personally and try to convince the principal to restore the school dance, Ian decided to gather students to have their own unofficial school dance without breaking any school rules. I really liked this moment because this part of the book not only showed how much Ian cares for his friend Julia, but showed how brave Ian was to try to convince students to have their school dance, but by obeying school regulations. However, I thought the conclusion to the book did not feel very satisfying because having the principal just re-announce the return of the school dance and have him just listen to music while wearing ear buds did not seem very reasonable according to his strict personality. If I were the author, I would have extended the story in order to have Julia express her opinions on how Ian saved her from getting into serious trouble.
In my personal opinion, I would give this book 3 out of 5 stars because even though most of the story was very motivational, the ending was not very satisfying because the conclusion only had the principal re-announcing the school dance and putting on his ear buds to listen to music. I would only recommend this book people who enjoy drama-themed books because this story is mostly about drama and tension between a trio of friends that will mostly satisfy drama-readers, and not readers who prefer other genres. Although the conclusion to this story did not feel satisfying, I mostly enjoyed this story for the tension and suspense I felt while reading this drama-themed story.

[Kerri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick, fun read.

[Raina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part of the Orca Currents Hi/Lo series.
Ian is a participant in the flash mob trend. The book opens with him orchestrating a flash mob in a department store, where a mob congregates and has a sudden four-minute pillow fight.
I chose this book as my representative dip in the Orca world of publishing because I'm fascinated by the flash mob trend. It reminds me of Little Brother, and the awesome counter-cultural theatre of Abbie Hoffman. And it is impressive how much Walters accomplishes in 108 pages. There's inter-friend drama, a nice debate about freedom of expression, even-handed treatment of a harsh principal.. it's good! The main complaint I have about Orca is their covers - I have a hard time booktalking this cover. Oh, and the technology discussion will be dated in like, two seconds.

[Adena · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quick jaunt into a high school view of flash mobs. Our protagonist Ian is a high school student using Facebook and email first to boycott a fast food restaurant and then to participate in and organize flash mobs.

**some spoilers follow**

It's a quick read and the three main characters, Ian, Julia and Oswald, come across as normal teenagers - almost unusual in YA fiction! There is definitely a Hermione vibe to Julia and sometimes it's hard to tell just why Ian has a nascent crush on her.

Overall, In a Flash adequately covers the emergence of flash mobs and their point/pointlessness. It would have been interesting if it had explored a little bit more the intersection of flash mob and protest, since essentially Ian ends up organizing peaceful protests.

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads. I found this book best read in one sitting. Because the characters are introduced through short periods of time and events in their lives broken into separate chapters, I really needed to concentrate to keep track of each character and their situation. By the time each character appeared in enough chapters to explore their relationships, I was caught up in the multiple plots and the book sped toward their interconnected resolution. The book is charged with emotions. I found the advanced technology and politics intriguing and seamlessly incorporated.

[melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun quick little read. If you have followed my blog at all, you know that I am a fan of this publishing company. I liked this one. It was some kids who were doing flash mobs, and even organizing them for some fun. In the end, they were doing one for a purpose. It was an interesting combination of intelligent characters, and a fast paced story line. Totally made ME wanna try a flash mob. Not a lot to this one, but a fun read none the less.

[Shawn Bird · Rating 4 out of 5]

This took about an hour to read. A nice straight-forward plot and characters and conflict that teens will identify with. A good message modelling how to resolve conflicts in appropriate ways with lessons on how social media can be used positively and negatively. This would make a good novel study for a weak reader, because there is so much to think about, despite the simplicity of the story.

[Janaki · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a good book, and I liked it!

[Jasmine Rockwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, sweet, and to the point. It's not too heavy and it's not just feel-good fluff.