Booked

Throughout Booked, Alexander uses footnotes to define words from Nick’s advanced vocabulary. In the book’s first footnote, Nick remarks that the dictionary his dad wrote, Weird and Wonderful Words, also contains footnotes. Although Nick’s dad irritates him, Nick shares his father’s interest in big words and his talent for using them in casual conversation. Nick describes his crush on April as callipygous, his dad as suffering from logorrhea, the Eggleston twins as hellkites, and Winnifred as a gadfly. With each vocabulary word, Nick defines the word in footnotes and also includes humorous comments. For example, next to the definition of gadfly, Nick states, “In the dictionary, there’s a pic of Winnifred next to this word” (288).

Although the poems use second-person point of view, they portray Nick’s distinct voice. For example, the poems use the phrase get this in moments of surprise and tension. The phrase occurs when Nick is frustrated about a teammate’s injury or marveling at the Ghanaian chocolate bar Coby gives him. The phrase also occurs in the title of a poem: “Inside the Bag is, Get This, FREEDOM.” It’s such a distinctive phrase for Nick that when April says it to him on the phone, Nick is surprised: “(Did she just say get this?)” (220)