The Other Normals

In The Other Normals by Ned Vizzini Peregrine (Perry) Eckert at 15 year old spends his days playing a role playing game called Creatures and Caverns. In C&C Perry has a character named Pekker Cland .C&C mostly a game where you play with friends but he has none. Perry lacks social skills and has no one to play C&C with. Until one day he meets a kid named Sam his own age. Perry and Sam become friends and play after school. Everything was going alright for Perry until his parents decide to send him to summer camp. He gets sent to camp for 8 weeks. What he thought would be the worst summer of his life was something he thought he would ever be doing.

When Perry gets to camp to gets into a fight with a kid named Ryu. Even though Perry was the one who got beat up, he ended up getting in trouble. After what happened Perry and Ryu have a grudge on each other.  In C&C Perry has a character named Pekker Cland. After going to the nurse’s office from the fight he sees a girls sitting on a bench. It was love at first sight for Perry. Perry tries to make an impression on her but makes a fool out of himself by not knowing what to do. But he did learn that her name is Anna and that he wants to be more than friends. After Anna leaves, he sees figure in the distance that looks like his character. He chases after him full of questions. As he climbs out the window he lands on his ankle. The figure turns around. When Perry sees him up close he has red skin and yellow hair just like Pekker Cland. When they introduce each other Perry finds out his name is Mortin Enaw and Mortin finds out that Perry was part of a prophecy. Mortin takes Perry to the world of other normal. It is a universe where everyone has a correspondent. When Perry arrives he meets Mortin’s acquaintance Ada Ember. In the world of other normals Perry learns about what he has to do. The prophecy was that the princess of their universe was captured. After the princess was captured, the world got worse and worse. People went from being civilians to bounty hunters. The prophecy said that if Perry kissed the princess’s correspondent from earth it would restore Mortin’s world. The princess’s correspondent turns out to be Anna. While preparing for what he had to do. He also could take down a very powerful guard named Ophisa to free the princess instead. During the preparation, they get captured and sent to prison by the evil cops that work for Ophisa. To break out Perry tries using C&C skills. After breaking out they also go on many more adventures like fighting an entire family of a hybrid of a dog and human, and just trying to survive. When Perry got signed up to summer camp, he never thought that he would be doing this. Perry faces many challenges throughout his C&C journey that break his social skills and toughness.

After a couple days in the world of other normals defeating Ophisa would take too long so Mortin sent him back to kiss Anna. The camp has a square dance where all the girls and boys go to the dining hall to dance. At the dance Perry tries again to make an impression on her. This time it works. They arrange a date a few days later across the lake. Right when they are about to kiss Perry stops. Perry tells Anna he can’t do this. Anna gets and tells him that he has to kiss because Anna made a bet with her friends that she would do it. This just makes Perry mad and he stomps away. While going back to his yurt he bumps into Ryu in the woods. Ryu was accompanied by 2 friends wielding knives. Mortin and Ada come in time to help him as they also accidentally bring Ophisa. They defeat Ohpisa after a series of events in the dining hall and burn it down so that the remains would not be seen.

Perry found himself doing something he never would have imagined in his 8 weeks at summer camp. Over his journey Perry changes completely. Before going to summer camp he had no social skills and had no self-confidence. But after his time at camp his personality reversed. Perry now had full self-confidence and was no longer hung up on C&C and was now a lot more social.