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| Dairy Queen | 
 enlarge | Author: Catherine Murdock
Publisher: Graphia
Category: Book
List Price: $8.99
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $8.98 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 18577
Media: Paperback
Edition: 288
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 0618863354
EAN: 9780618863358
ASIN: 0618863354
Publication Date: June 4, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Ships daily from Florida. We value your satisfaction and our feedback! Thanks Z61R
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| Customer Reviews:
 Not My Usual Dish of Milk . . . . January 24, 2007
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I picked this book up because the cover got to me in a
big way. If I owned the original photograph, I'd frame
it. When I started browsing through the book, I got
hooked by the marvelous DJ and the story of what
happens when nobody talks about what's going on in
their lives and their hearts.
To an adult, urban reader in this psychologized world,
Dairy Queen is a thriller. Each muted half-conversation
is tense with things unsaid and with personhood denied.
It's a book I would have loved to share with my kid.
--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
the forthcoming novel bang BANG from Kunati Books.ISBN
9781601640005
Richie's Picks: DAIRY QUEEN June 3, 2006
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
"So when Brian Nelson stepped out of his fancy new truck in his fancy new work boots that his mother probably bought him at Wal Mart, I was just about as angry as I've ever been. Brian Nelson's a Hawley quarterback. Hawley's backup quarterback, but still. Quarterbacks are always pretty full of themselves--even Win was sometimes, though he had a right to be -- and Brian Nelson is just about the worst. He gets top grades and his father owns a dealership so of course he has a new Cherokee, and all the girls are after him, and last year he had scouts looking at him even though he wasn't a starter because his grades are so good that he'd raise the team GPA, which coaches always like. But ever since I've been watching him play, ever since junior high even, whenever he fumbles or messes up or gets intercepted, he always right off the bat blames someone else, which is really annoying to me and I bet it's even annoyinger to everyone else on his team who's working so hard. He's the very worst that a lazy, stuck-up, spoiled Hawley quarterback could be.
"But there he stood in his fancy new work boots and his Hawley Football cutoffs and his Hawley Football T-shirt. 'Hey, Mr. Schwenk, how's your hip doing.' "
Mr. Schwenk, D.J.'s dad, needs a walker these days after thoroughly trashing his hip while moving the manure spreader. At the end of this summer D.J. will be returning for eleventh-grade at Red Bend High--whose arch rival is neighboring Hawley High. Her older brothers were stars on Red Bend's team a few years ago and D.J. knows first-hand how hard they trained every summer in preparation for football season--she'd always been there as their necessary extra body for running routes and catching passes. But the athletically talented D.J. had to quit the Red Bend girls' basketball team last winter, forget about spring track, and watch her grades go into free-fall after needing to take over all the farm work on the Wisconsin dairy that's been in her family for generations. ("You can't milk thirty-two cows with a walker.") And now, thanks to the connection between her dad and the Hawley Football coach Jimmy Ott, that lazy, stuck-up, spoiled Hawley quarterback Brian Nelson has pulled up to spend the summer in her face, helping out on her farm.
"Brian kept sitting down. He'd lug a bale up the stack and then sit down on it, shaking out his arms each time like there was nothing in them. I've never seen anyone move as slow as Brian, not even Grandpa Warren with his arthritis. It was like he was in a contest to see who could do the least work, only he was the only contestant. Plus he was really angry now, which was good because it kept my mind off how thirsty I was. He muttered something under his breath.
" 'What?' I asked.
" 'You'd probably jump off the roof if they told you to.'
" 'What are you talking about?'
" 'Don't you see how you live? You do all the work they expect you to do and you don't even mind. It's like you're a cow. And one day in about fifty years they're going to put you on a truck and take you away to die and you're not even going to mind that either.' Brian shook his head like he was truly sorry."
Little does D.J. know, upon Brian's first arriving at the farm, that she will find herself utilizing the knowledge of her brothers' workouts to spend much of the summer in a cow pasture training that spoiled Hawley quarterback for his football season.
The scenes involving the misadventures of her dad's taking over the family's cooking and watching "The Food Channel," and one involving D.J.'s best friend Amber and are among the funniest bits of YA I have ever read. But there is also a silo-and-a-half full of stuff about life and family communications and farming to think about here, even if you haven't actually gone through an agricultural experience like I did. (I woke up twenty-something years ago to realize that the highlight of my eighteen-hour workdays on the farm was the arrival of the mail. And that eighteen hours was not nearly enough time to get done what needed doing.)
"And that's what I thought about all night long. All this stuff you never hear on Oprah Winfrey, which you can understand because if I got on the show and started talking, everyone in the audience would probably kill themselves."
Set in the land of the Cheeseheads, Catherine Gilbert Murdock's first novel is a brilliant tale about the young woman who decides she is not going to be just another cow.
Dairy queen July 27, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Not just for Teens. I loved it and then gave as a gift it to a Godchild of 30 something who loved it too. so now I am waiting to get the report from the two teens; one girl and one boy who have it. Something so sharp about dealing with real imperfect people in a loving way. Nothing held back in growing up and learning to be an adult. Whatever age it seems to have a truth about change and resposibility. And definitley made me laugh again and again.
 Half of a Good Story August 21, 2006
4 out of 15 found this review helpful
I'm going to disagree with what everyone else here has written. I thought the first half of this book dragged and I didn't see what all the praise was about. Ms. Murdock needed a stronger editor, in my opinion. I'm not entirely sure why I read that far except that I was stuck on a plane. I don't know if my students, would give the book to page 130 or so to pick up.
I really enjoyed the last half of the book - there was plenty of action, there were reasons for all the drama and there was a real sense of humor reflected in both the characters and their situations. The first half of the book could have been cut in half and the book would have been stronger.
I had problems with several of the characters. I don't know why the adults are all so two-dimensional. Why include them at all? And what's with all the side stories about her brothers? One shows up in a single scene, one never shows at all and the youngest one doesn't seem to have a purpose other than to make her drive to a city to get a haircut.
 This book bored me August 30, 2007
4 out of 9 found this review helpful
I know some like reading about the farm life, but I didn't. I found it a bore. The book is 274 pages and seems to DRAG on. Like you keep thinking "is this book ever going to end". And I definetly don't think that with all books- I've read books with 400 pages and up (and liked them). Anyway, It takes FOREVER to finally get to the main plot of the story.
This book can be funny, "ha ha" funny not "laugh till you cry" funny, but I still didn't think it was worth it.
Two stars.
EDIT:
the other reviews-
The reviews seem to be coming more from adults who are taking a deeper look at the writing. I don't know any teenage girl who would read this book and say "what nice character development it has".
We want action. Adventure. SOMETHING.
Ugh, I remember I could read this book to put me to sleep at night. Development shvelopment. Hurry up and get to the dang story, Murdock!!
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