A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag facts for kids
First edition
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| Author | Gordon Korman |
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| Language | English |
| Publisher | Scholastic Trade |
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Publication date
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August 1987 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, MMP) |
| Pages | 257 pp |
| ISBN | 0-590-40694-9 |
A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag is an exciting young adult novel. It was written by Gordon Korman, a popular author from Canada. He now lives in New York City.
The story is about two main characters: Raymond Jardine and Sean Delancy. Sean is a popular student. He's also a starter on the high school basketball team. Raymond Jardine feels like he has no luck at all. Because of this, he's always planning ways to get to a special place. He calls it "the luck place." It's a Greek island named Theamelpos. He believes going there will fix his bad luck.
Contents
What's the Story About?
The book's main plot follows Raymond Jardine and Sean Delancy. They are partners for an English poetry project. Raymond tries to get Sean involved in many plans. His biggest goal is to win a contest. This contest is run by the English department. The prize is a trip to Theamelpos for the summer!
New Friends and Big Plans
On their journey, they meet Ashley. She is a beautiful model. Ashley joins their poetry project, making them a team of three. They also meet Steve Semenski, nicknamed Cementhead. He seems to be the luckiest student in the whole school.
Sean and Raymond come up with a bold idea. They ask Sean's grandfather to pretend to be a poet. This poet is Gavin Gunhold, who is fictional and not well-known. They hope this will make their poetry project much better.
The School's Secret Project
There's also a side story happening at the school. The school leaders are trying to hide something. They have a deal with the local government. The school is being used to test a project called SACGEN. This stands for Solar Air Current GENerator. It's a made-up system. It's supposed to power the school using only renewable energy.
The school building was disconnected from the regular power grid. The middle part of the school was emptied out. This space was used for the control room and huge batteries. But the project barely works. It causes the school to have blackouts often. Students even call it "The Windmill" because it's so unreliable.
The Big Reveal
Sean and Raymond don't know that their English teacher removed something important. She took the only proof that Gavin Gunhold had passed away from the local library. She wanted to see how far they would go to win the contest.
This leads to Sean and Raymond planning something big. They work with Sean's grandfather. They decide to show everyone how bad "The Windmill" is. They invite local news reporters to a poetry reading at the school. The school principal and government officials want to keep their secret. They ignore warnings from the system engineer. This causes the SACGEN unit to fail completely. It even explodes!
After the SACGEN unit is destroyed, the students' trick is found out. They had made up extra poems by Gunhold. But the principal still gives Sean and Raymond the prize trip to Theamelpos. He does this to send them away. This way, they won't be able to talk to the news while SACGEN-II is being built.
