The Strange Case of Origami Yoda

“The big question: Is Origami Yoda Real? Well, of course he’s real. I mean, he’s a real finger puppet made out of a real piece of paper. But I mean: Is he REAL? Does he really know things? Can he see the future? Does he use the Force? Or is he just a hoax that fooled a whole bunch of us at McQuarrie Middle School? It’s REALLY important for me to figure out if he’s real. Because I’ve got to decide whether to take his advice or not, and if I make the wrong choice, I’m doomed!”

Tommy Lomax begins his case file on Origami Yoda by asking if it’s a real predictor or just an inanimate object with a very lucky track record. For Tommy, it’s vital that Yoda be accurate his advice will determine Tommy’s willingness to ask Sara Bolt to dance. Tommy ponders a classic question in philosophy: Does something cause something else, or does it just happen to be there when the something-else occurs? The answer to that question varies with each situation; finding that answer is the job of science, but Tommy is a kid in sixth grade, and he’s improvising. The case study is his way of working on the problem.

In the above lines, the narrative varies the rhythm with rhetorical questions. It uses exclamation points and all-caps, which are characteristic of how a sixth grader would express themselves.

“It’s not that we don’t want to [dance]. In fact, we spend most of each Fun Night debating whether we should and wishing a girl would just come up and ask us instead.”

Tommy touches on one of the chief problems of growing up: How to connect socially with others. The novel shows how rejection is a huge issue for kids, made even worse by the social penalties for getting rejected in public and