Sean Delancey, high school basketball star, is just an ordinary, popular guyuntil he meets eccentric Raymond Jardine, a boy with absolutely no luck. Although reluctant at first, Sean is drawn into Raymond's wacky scheme to secure a spot on the school-sponsored trip to Theamelpos, the fabulous Greek island that grants good luck to everyone who visits it. Through his friendship with Raymond, Sean learns to value individuality and independent thinking. And in the book's hilarious climax, it is Sean himself who engineers the showdown between the student body and SACGEN, the principal's pet projecta virtually useless Solar/Air Current Generating Machine that supposedly powers the high school. Smooth, skillful writing and an engaging cast of quirky characters will keep readers chuckling to the very end of this thoroughly enjoyable book. Ages 12-up. (August) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Everyone's out to ``get Jardine,'' at least that's what Jardine tells Sean Delancey, narrator of Korman's latest comic romp, which takes a swing at the marvels of high tech while it chronicles the saga of an original hard-luck Joe. Actually, bizarre things do happen to Jardine (who always refers to himself in third-person nominative): dogs chase him on his scooter; the model government he lauded in his political science project is overthrown and its monarch decapitated on the day his paper is due; gorgeous Ashley Bach opts for a guy with big biceps; and the obscure subject of his 30-page poetry assignment has died, leaving only one poem to his credit. Sean, a popular, average teen, is Jardine's perfect antithesis. An unenthusiastic partner in nearly all of Jardine's schemes, he splendidly describes the havoc that ensues as Jardine tries to win a school trip to Greece. As in the author's Son of Interflux (Booklist 83:403 N 1 86), adults feisty Grandpa Delancey excepted get a roasting, and the telling is overlong. However, both the author's comic comebacks and his timing are excellent, and situations, including a few guaranteed to make readers laugh out loud, are in perfect harmony with the wacky characters. It's particularly delightful to hear Sean slipping into Jardine's idiom: ``And SACGEN (the school's quirky generating system) will rue the day it did this to Delancey's best friend.'' Perhaps Sean's not such a ``normal'' kid after all. Gr. 9-12. SZ. Grandfathers Fiction / High schools Fiction / Schools Fiction [CIP] 87-4328

Another YA farce from the author of Don't Care High and Son of Interflux. When Good Luck was distributed, someone else got Raymond Jardine's allotment. But he sees a way to change that--provided he can figure out how to be named one of the six students DeWitt High will send to the Greek isle of Theamelpos for summer school--Theamelpos, whence dozens of tourists have returned with tales of fabulous good fortune. Sound bizarre? Wait, there's more. This same DeWitt High is the test site for a huge, ill-conceived $33,000,000 solar collector-cum-windmill that hangs on the edge of violent self-destruction. Enough? Not yet: there's the voluptuous and energetic Ashley Bach, the desperate plan to resurrect a long-dead and deservedly little-known poet, and the creation of the only varsity ice-hockey team on Long Island, plus a few minor ingredients. Korman stirs all this together, adding heavy doses of irony and wish-fulfilment, until it whips up into a contrived but crowd-pleasing confection. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.