An Un-Calibrated Centrifuge

This one was better than the last two. I enjoyed the story a lot and it felt mostly believable.

There were more continuity issues in this book. Calvin Coconut's dad (Little Johnny Coconut) had a hit song. In the first book it was "A Little Bit of La-la-la-love" and in this book it’s "I Love Sunshine Pop." Also Ledward has gone from being half Hawaiian, half a bunch of other things to half Hawaiian, half Filipino to a Hawaiian guy.

Salisbury doesn't mention Baja Bill's race (he looks haole in the illustrations) which really stood out to me. As I mentioned in my review of Calvin Coconut: Kung Fooey, Salisbury is getting worse and worse at the race aspect in his books. The characters are diverse, but he only describes the characters of color (exception: Willy in Calvin Coconut: Trouble Magnet).

He also unnecessarily defines things (shoyu in this book). It makes it feel like he's writing for white mainlanders. It's like when I read Korean YA books and everything is overexplained. Outsiders might not get it, but they can look things up. Don't know what shoyu is? Look it up.

And while I'm on words: the word is gunwale not gunnel. Gunwale is a part of a ship. Gunnel is a fish. I don't want to be pedantic or prescriptivist (maybe I'm failing in this instance), but words do have meaning and I can't believe no one corrected this mistake before the book went to print.

I did like that Shayla is getting more attention. I want to learn more about the secondary characters. It's happening very slowly but surely.