Product Description

Tom Henderson (a.k.a. King Dork, Chi-mo, Hender-fag, and Sheepie) is a typical American high school loser until he discovers the book, The Catcher in the Rye, that will change the world as he knows it. When Tom discovers his deceased father’s copy of the Salinger classic, he finds himself in the middle of several interlocking conspiracies and at least half a dozen mysteries involving dead people, naked people, fake people, ESP, blood, a secret code, guitars, monks, witchcraft, the Bible, girls, the Crusades, a devil head, and rock and roll. And it all looks like it’s just the tip of a very odd iceberg of clues that may very well unravel the puzzle of his father’s death and–oddly–reveal the secret to attracting semihot girls. Being in a band could possibly be the secret to the girl thing–but good luck finding a drummer who can count to four.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #224861 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-11
• Released on: 2006-04-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Amazon.com Review
In Frank Portman's dazzling debut novel, frustrated song-writer and high school student Tom Henderson finds his dead father's copy of The Catcher in the Rye, and his life changes forever. Part social satire, part mystery, with a healthy dose of rock music (and angst), King Dork is one of our must-read favorites of the year.

Bonus Content from Frank Portman

Frank Portman (aka Dr. Frank) is not just an author, he's also a musician. We were lucky enough to get a few tracks and a few words from the man behind King Dork, his band The Mr. T. Experience, and the relationship between his book and his music.

"King Dork"
This is the "title track" for my new book. No matter how many times I say that (and I've now said it at least twice by my count) it still sounds strange...Anyhow, I wrote this song for my band, the Mr. T Experience, back in the mid-nineties (you can hear the electrified rock and roll version on the MTX album The Mr. T Experience... and the Women Who Love Them). While I was gingerly, sheepishly exploring the idea of trying to write a book, and not really knowing where to begin, Krista Marino (who was to become my editor at Delacorte) suggested that I try to turn a song into a novel as a way of getting started. I can't remember why I settled on "King Dork" as the song to "novelize," but I started thinking about the narrator/character of this song and after quite a bit of staring at a blank Word document and banging my head against the bar I eventually started typing. I didn't tell anyone at the time, but for months the file entitled "King Dork_(novel)_ms" had only the words "there's no way I can write a whole book, absolutely no way, who am I kidding?" on it. The fact that this did turn into a sort of novel in the end continues to mystify me. So this is an acoustic recording of the song that started it all, in effect. "I'm King Dork and I want you to be my Queen..."

Listen to "King Dork"

"Thinking of Suicide"
The narrator of King Dork, Tom Henderson, has a band and is trying to figure out how to play his guitar and how to write songs. He writes several songs through the course of the book, and I thought it might be fun actually to come up with the songs rather than just alluding to them in the text. The songs were written by me "as Tom Henderson," know what I mean? "Thinking of Suicide" is one of the first complete songs Tom writes. The title comes from an informational pamphlet for troubled teens handed out by the school. He likes the drawing of the girl on the cover. "This would make a pretty good song," he thinks: "all I had to do was give the girl a name and feel sorry for myself while pretending to be her. And figure out some lyrics and chords and stuff." This song, which incidentally ends up echoing through and complicating his family life, his social life, and his psychological life, is the result.

Listen to "Thinking of Suicide"

"I Wanna Ramone You"
This one is a little hard to "set up," but I'll give it a shot. There are three strands all tangled up in this song. Strand A: Tom is doing research on the life and times of his mysteriously deceased father, and part of that involves poring over ancient texts like the Bible and The Catcher in the Rye. It's a long story, but in the course of this research he inadvertently learns that the French verb ramoner (which literally means "to scrub out a chimney") can be used as a sexual metaphor. As a rock and roller, he of course immediately thinks of the Ramones, and, voilà, a new English euphemism for sex is born - I ramone, you ramone, he, she or it ramones... (This is useful to him, as it gives him a much cooler metaphor for sex than any of the other ones available; and it proved useful to the author, i.e., me, as well, for pretty much the same reason.) Strand B: Tom is taking Advanced French, which he describes as "a form of the French language in which only the present tense is used. Primarily employed for telling time and for describing the activities of this one guy named Jean and this other guy named Claude." So in writing his song about the timeless power of love, he decides to include some sophisticated, romantic French phrases in the lyrics. Strand C: He has this pretty big crush on a girl from a neighboring town, so he writes a song about her. (As one does in those situations.) "I Wanna Ramone You" is the result, one of his first full-on love songs.

Listen to "I Wanna Ramone You"

From School Library Journal
Grade 10 Up-Original, heartfelt, and sparkling with wit and intelligence, this debut novel tells the story of a 14-year-old outsider, Tom Henderson. For him, life is a series of humiliations, from the associate principal who mocks him to the popular girls who put him on their Dud list. The teen takes refuge in music, writing songs, and inventing band names with his only friend, Sam. He looks for a copy of The Catcher in the Rye in a box of books left by his father, a detective who died under strange circumstances. Tom sets out to read each volume, decode the secret messages that he finds, and figure out who his father really was. The daily torments of life at Hillmont High School play out brilliantly in ways that are both hilarious and heartbreaking. Sexual references and encounters abound, and the language is frank-oral sex is a frequent topic, as is drug use by teens and adults-but none of it is gratuitous. The plot unfolds at a leisurely pace, with digressions on music, popular culture, high school customs, literary criticism, and general philosophical observations, but Tom is so engaging that most readers won't mind. He's intellectually far above most of his peers but still recognizably a teen in his obsessions. The plot's mysteries come together for a conclusion that is satisfying but doesn't tie up all the loose ends. This dazzling novel will linger long in readers' memories.-Miranda Doyle, San Francisco Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Gr. 9-12. From its subtle cover, featuring the title superimposed over the yellow lettering on a vintage red copy of Catcher in the Rye, to its intelligent, self-deprecating, opinionated narrator, Portman's novel is a humorous, scathing indictment of the current public education system. Sophomore Tom Henderson is bored with AP classes in which creating international foods and a "collage and Catcher" curriculum pass for academic instruction. What does he do to engage his mind? Along with his best friend, he invents a new band every few hours--a band name, cover art, song titles--no matter that neither boy owns a guitar. The guys aren't popular; they're picked on by the alpha sadists in gym class and nicknamed in humiliating ways, but they still survive. A mystery about the death of Tom's father and the caricatured assistant principal's illicit activities are weakly executed, but Tom's voice carries the story. Mature situations, casual sexual experiences, and allusions to Salinger suggest an older teen audience, who will also best appreciate the appended bandography and the very funny glossary. Cindy Dobrez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Excellent, excellent voice-- I fell in love with it.
The boy narrating this story has a perfect teenage voice-- funny, a little too smart and self-conscious about it, alternately defensive and searching. I was in love with it after the first page: I handed the book to someone else with instructions to read the first page. She loved it too. I had a hard time getting the book back.

The voice keeps its magic all the way through. I liked the device of using a class assignment of one of those "30 days to a better vocabulary" books to justify the narrator's use of words most teenagers wouldn't use.

The events in the book were nicely balanced between realism and farce. Some plot points were a little larger than life, but nothing too over the top.

Four stars instead of five? Near the end, the book veered off track on the murder-mystery subplot and lost steam. It recovered a little before the very end, but not fully. This was the last ten pages or so: suddenly I just wasn't interested in picking the book up and finishing it.

I feel this book is aimed at people my age (late 30s) more than at teenagers. There's something fishy when I know more than half the bands mentioned in the book. Boomer-resentment and Catcher In The Rye backlash are also Gen X phenomenon, I suspect. It didn't bother me, but I can understand why other reviewers called the book dated.

Beautiful writing, funny, and well worth the read.

life is so unfair
If this author was Harvard bound, younger and more photogenic, perhaps he'd have a shot at the half million advance awarded to Kaavya "The Internalizer" Viswanathan whose plagiarism scandal recently rocked the literary world. He'd certainly deserve it, as there is no evidence that he himself didn't compose "King Dork" which is one of the best novels about the high school experience that I've read in a long time.

This book is a far more accurate, painful and hilarious look at the world of adolescence. If you identify with books in which which Nerd Girl gets a brand name makeover, sleeps with Campus Stud, winds up with Brooding Artist, makes a speech about values and gets into the Ivy League, then you probably won't enjoy "King Dork." If on the other hand, you are still mourning the cancellation of "Freaks and Geeks," then you probably will.

"King Dork" had me laughing and nodding my head in recognition from the first page to the last, whereas with the makeover type books I just snicker and wonder what universe the authors are living in to create a high school world that's 100 percent fantasy and fluff. What a shame that a book like "King Dork" that actually tells it like it isn't given half the (pre scandal) press of a book like "How Opal Mehta." For such a threadbare concept - young alienated man comes of age with the help of books, music and the opposite sex, it's still fresh and original.

Interesting debut.
Frank Portman, King Dork (Delcaorte, 2006)

I can't remember the last time I've ever identified so much with a protagonist by the end of page one of a novel. I have to say, because of that, I expected to love this novel in ways that most of the YA lit I've been reading recently have missed. That didn't happen. But it was still a pretty fine book.

Tom "Mo" Henderson is King Dork, the high school student who doesn't really fit in with, well, anyone. His best friend, Sam Hellerman, and he are trying to start a band. He's coasting through classes trying mostly not to be noticed. He has a barely civil relationship with his mother and stepfather. All of which changes when he discovers his father's ld copy of Catcher in the Rye in the basement, which sparks a mystery into who his father really was-- and how that relates to who he is.

The biggest problem with King Dork is that, especially for a young adult novel, it's slow. Not necessarily in the sense of deliberately-paced, just slow. There's nothing terribly compelling about it unless (and even if) you find yourself identifying with Mo. When you put it down, there's no real compulsion to pick it back up. The biggest counter to this problem is that, aside from the pace dilemma, there's good, solid writing here. Portman's characters are for the most part well-drawn, and interact in more realistic ways than one finds in most fiction, and the massive ball of coincidence that leads to the book's climax is presented in at least a partially believable way. *** ½