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The Profile [Paperback]

Gregory Victor Babic (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)


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Book Description

January 10, 2009
Danielle McCormack, student at Middlewood High School, wants to be a journalist. However, she could not possibly have anticipated, when Dean Lawrence Polking, head of HRL Enterprises, internationally-renowned retailing magnate and hated Destroyer of the Middlewood Old Town Mall, attended the Annual Awards night at her school as the Honored Guest Speaker and returning 'Favorite Son", that her life would be thrown into turmoil and everything she thought she knew about the man and his dream would have to be re-evaluated. ? How could she have known that everything she thought she knew about herself and her place in the world would come to mean nothing against truths and realities she could never have anticipated?

Editorial Reviews

Review

I am glad to see under the title that this was meant as a young adult story. Then I had an idea of what genre this is supposed to be. Beyond that, I did not find anything that interested me into continuing to read the story. It was well written and does have potential. -- Amazon Top Reviewer

There is certainly something in the originality of the idea-- a young adult novel that opens with a focus on a "retail magnate" who gives a speech at his old high school. That originality is a little bit of the undoing of the piece. It introduces a note of unreality right from the beginning. To be honest, it is difficult to imagine high school students who care that much about a businessman-- let alone listen with the degree of riotous interest that the author describes. I'm not sure that even Bill Gates would get that level of involvement from kids that age. There was also something a little fake about the main character-- he was supposed to be a "retailer", but from the description of his activities he seemed more to be someone who sets up shopping malls-- more a developer than a retailer. It sounds like a little detail, but it goes to the credibility of the story. I think that the prose style and diction were both adequate. The writing was clean, if uninspired. The level seemed appropriate for Young Adults. I personally was not really interested in the plot, despite the originality-- at least not from what I read in this excerpt. -- Amazon Top Reviewer

This manuscript for younger readers starts out solidly but ultimately disappoints due to theist outlandish plot. After winning a journalism award, tenth-grader Danni McCormick decides to write a profile of Middletown's favorite son and wildly successful developer, Mr. Polking, who has returned to build a new shopping mega-plex, which some people feel is destroying the older mall. Unfortunately for Danni, Mr. Polking has never before agreed to granta personal interview. During a phone conversation with Polking, arranged by Danni's journalism club sponsor, Mrs. Adams, Polking tells Danni he'll do the interview if she can solve the riddle of what the letters "HRL" in his company name, stand for. For some reason, this news upsets Danni's mother, a freelance editor-it seems there are secrets about her mother's past that are better left unreported. Nonetheless, Danni is determined to succeed. With help from a computer savvy friend and a few hints from her mother, Danni gets the interview. The story's premise is doubtlessly engaging, but unlikely plot twists (the local newspaper offers Danni $50,000 for her story newspaper, and Polking is building the biggest structure in the world) and dialog that very un-teenage dialogue (Danni's friend Ricky concludes that the older part of Middletown suffers from "economic rationalism") make the novel hard to finally believe -- manuscript review by Publishers Weekly, an independent organization

About the Author

Gregory Victor Babic is an Australian author who has worked in librarianship, policing, retailing, marketing, and teaching. His fiction writing is always extremely personal and reflects a view of self that is at once hopeful, inspiring, and filled with love.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 176 pages
  • Publisher: All Things That Matter Press (January 10, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 098220566X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0982205662
  • Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,131,329 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gregory Victor Babic, also known as Greg Babic, is an Australian author of non-fiction and fiction.

He was born 16 October 1963 in Melbourne, Victoria, but moved to Sydney, New South Wales at about one month of age and has lived in that city ever since.

He graduated from Sydney Boys High School in 1981 (with the Higher School Certificate), the University of Sydney in 1990 (with a Bachelor of Arts degree), the University of New South Wales in 1992 (with a Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education), and was a targeted graduate (one of the "best of the best" from across the state of New South Wales) first employed by the New South Wales Department of Education and Training in 1993 (when he earned his Teacher's Certificate). At various times he has taught English, History, General Studies, and Retail Operations in numerous public sector secondary schools in the greater Sydney metropolitan area.

He worked briefly in the Australian Federal Police as a Constable in the mid-Eighties. He was the President of his Recruit Training Class, and received the Prize "For Excellence in Law Practice" upon Graduation. However, in his second year it became clear to him that the AFP was not a good fit for him and vice versa, so he resigned to finish his education and become a teacher.

He has written two non-fiction books for the education market, Study Success Know-How: A 1,001-Point Action Checklist Designed To Help You Take Control Of Your Learning And Maximise Your Achievement Potential - Immediately! (ISBN 1-876932-19-8) and Film Study Terms: A glossary of key concepts related to the study of Film (ISBN 1-876932-97-X) - both of which are published by Five Senses Education Pty Ltd. His third non-fiction book, Words to Inspire Writers: A perpetual Calendar of classic Writing-related Quotations - on Writers, Writing, Words, Books, Literature, and Publishing - specifically selected to illustrate the Writing Process and to motivate Authors every day (ISBN 978-0-980372-20-5), is published by F. C. Sach & Sons, Publishers, in January 2008, and has now been released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/), to provide Motivation for Writers Every Day of the Year Without Cost.

His writing has won the University of Sydney Union Literary Competition (Prose Section) and the Henry Lawson Prize for Prose (administered by the University of Sydney). He has just had his first young adult novel, The Profile (ISBN 978-0-9822-0566-2), published by All Things That Matter Press(tm), and was delighted when they chose to also publish his adult contemporary thriller (inspired by his own service in the Australian Federal Police), The Last Loose End (ISBN 978-0-9822-7226-8), which will be his first published novel for a general adult audience, but his fifth published book.

 

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4.0 out of 5 stars Aussie Author Rises from Down Under, February 19, 2009
This review is from: The Profile (Paperback)
Gregory Victor Babic has just broken into young adult fiction with his novel, The Profile.

Tenth grader, Danni MacCormack just received a Medallion for Journalism award, and is about to take on the most enterprising endeavor of her young life. Her single mother Ellen, and grandmother Mabel, are bursting with pride.
The story begins in Middlewood, Australia a sort of ghost town waiting for a divine intervention. A town whose heart otherwise seems to be beating its last. The town is a-twitter when the surprise guest speaker of the Annual Speech Night, Mr. Dean Lawrence Polking, arrives. He's a homegrown boy turned business magnate that has returned to invest in Middlewood High School, and his old stomping grounds, with the grandest architectural retail structure the world has ever seen.
Curious, Danni decides to interview him, but there's a catch: Dean Lawrence Polking has never granted a personal interview ever. The story gets interesting after Danni and her friend Kitra make a bet that neither of them wants Danni to lose.
After studying information gleaned from several sources spanning decades, Danni discovers a possible inroad. A personal interview will be granted to the individual who discovers the meaning behind the initials of Mr. Polking's company, HRL. To date, no one has.
What takes place after that is a fascinating toller coaster ride that rendered the book unputdownable. The charming and quirky characters were so believable, that as I read, I watched the whole thing unfold as if watching a movie.
The book is a bit rocky at the beginning, but by the time Danni makes her bet, the book is a fast-paced read. Find out how this tenacious girl keeps moving forward in the face of daunting circumstances, and what she discovers along the way.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
profile piece
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Garden Plaza, Larry Polking, Uncle Joe, Middlewood High School, Dean Lawrence Polking, Joseph Rossi, The Middlewood Gazette, Lami Adams, Aunt Ellen, Ray Eiger, Guest of Honor, Shagan Rand, Central Library, Howard Roark, Van Rhys, Journalism Award, Annual Speech Night, Ricardo Rossi, Fairweather Street, The Fountainhead, Eastern Esplanade
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