Son of Interflux

By Gordon Korman

Book Overview

Language is regarded, at least in most intellectual traditions, as the quintessential human attribute, at once evidence and source of most that is considered transcendent in us, distinguishing ours from the merely mechanical nature of the beast. Even if language did not have the sacrosanct status it does in our conception of human nature, however, the question of its presence in other species would still promote argument, for we lack any universally accepted, defining features of language, ones that would allow us to identify it unequivocally ours from other species and contention over the crucial attributes of language are responsible for the stridency of the debate over whether nonhuman animals can learn language. Aping Language is a critical assessment of each of the recent experiments designed to impact a language, either natural or invented, to an ape. The performance of the animals in these experiments is compared with the course of semantic and syntactic development in children, both speaking and signing. The book goes on to examine what is known about the neurological, cognitive, and specifically linguistic attributes of our species that subserve language, and it discusses how they might have come into existence. Finally, the communication of nonhuman primates in nature is assayed to consider whether or not it was reasonable to assume, as the experimenters in these projects did, that apes possess an ability to acquire language.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0590401637
• ISBN13: 9780590401630
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: Scholastic
• Length: 274 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

:)

--Simon Irving has never liked his father's massive international company, Interflux, which makes minor pieces of major things. After spotting a small piece of land which Interflux has planned to build a major factory on but which does not own, Simon buys the land with the entire Student Council money account, starts "Antiflux", puts up various shops and museums as Anitflux bends the rules of owning a piece of land, and overall, protests against his father. --This produces a hilarious novel that is hard to put down! --Marisa

HILARITY AND SOUL

I laughed, I cried... okay, actually I laughed so hard that I cried!! I consider every Gordon Korman book a must-read, but this is just "un"typical enough to delight die-hard Korman fans like myself. The master of comedic storytelling has masterfully woven a typically bizarre story (complete with a new plethora of crazy characters--some crazier than others) and given it a great deal of heart as well. It's hard to believe the "great organizing principle of the universe" has allowed this book to go out of print. If you see it, grab it!

Still great ten years later!

This is the book that got me hooked to Gordon Korman over ten years ago. I checked it out of the library continuously until it fell apart. In college I bought it and would read it monthly when I needed to be cheered up. I would read it out loud to anyone who would listen, and now that I am a seventh grade teacher, I still do the same. My students love Simon and they maintain that I modeled my teaching after the great Querada. What a compliment!

Funny, well written fantasy.

I used to get in so much trouble in junior high, because I was reading this book under my math notebook, and I would have laughing fits unstoppable enough to attract way too much attention. It is hysterical, escapist, entertaining, the perfect book for a kid who really needs a laugh. Highly reccomended.

Among Korman's best

This book combines hilarious Korman moments and characters (an insane art teacher; a schoolful of kids skipping school to sell worms) with thoughtfully considered characters and themes. Simon Irving (or is that Irving Simon?) and his dad wage the cleverest and most emotional war over a squiggle of land ever seen in fiction. Something to like on every level.