Changes

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that while kids' series generally start by covering a whole term time or even a school year, by the time it's worked out that more books are called for all the following volumes will concern less and less ground. This is a case in point – it being book TEN in this series means it's just regarding two flipping days. That way Norm can carry on having adventures without agingageing, with little in the way of consequence that people reading future books before seeing this one will have missed out on. In lesser hands, it generally means the author can churn out a whole book without much forethought or providing much content. Luckily this series isn't the usual, and [[:Category:Jonathan Meres|the author]] here generally is better than the routine.

And certainly , Norm's life is nothing like routine. Here he is making a new friend by dint of trying to enter the wrong house, not noticing he's on the wrong street. (She's not strictly new, either – if he'd ever looked up in geography he'd have seen her, but that would be beyond him.) Here he is rattling his father's cage once more – but once more not noticing. Here he is hearing a phrase such as 'rattling one's cage' and taking it literally, trying to figure it out in a cartoonish manner in his head and not working out its significance. Nothing is of significance to Norm except the manner he finds himself (two younger brothers, family forced to downsize both house size and grocery budget), the apparent idiocy of everyone he interacts with, and biking.

Said idiocy this time includes his best mate being interested in something mysterious, and his parents being invited to a salsa dance – and said new friend inviting him to untold unknowns. Which is a little awkward when it's all in a weekend. There should be more here. There was scope to have it play out over a longer period – Norm not noticing his best mate's mystique over a more realistic (for Norm) timeframe. Truncating the three different things – new girl's surprise, parents' embarrassment and the pal's distraction, mean they marry up so bleeding obviously into one and the same. There is not enough depth to the plot. Chekhov's gun is a rule that means everything in a drama must be used if it's worth mentioning in the first place, but that doesn't mean coming back to it immediately.