The Marino Mission

Karen B. Chapman

An excellent idea for a book-- write a short novel aimed at teens that contains one thousand SAT vocabulary words. Pick a subject that will probably resound with the teen population and run with it. Granted, your language is going to be a bit highbrow, but that's the whole purpose of the thing, right?

Chapman comes pretty close to getting it right. The target audience will not be the wiser when she stumbles a bit trying to fit one of the words in (using "prototype," for example, to describe the last instance of something, rather than the first, or an early, instance), and the plot gets a bit clunky at times. Still, for what it is, the books succeeds pretty well. Also comes with a good number of vocabulary exercises and the like for students to get the new words they're exposed to here cemented in their heads.