The House of the Scorpion  by Nancy Farmer is about a boy named Matt who is a clone of El Patron.  Matt is born out of the womb of a cow.  Matt sees people outside his window and becomes friends with them.  He meets Tam Lin, his body guard, and he learns things from him. El Patron dies because he needs Matt's organs so he can replace to old and dying organs; but Matt is poisoned so El Patron cannot use Matt's organs.  After El Patron dies, Matt goes to a plankton factory so El Patron's guards don't kill him.  At the plankton factory, people don't like Matt there, so he escapes.  Everyone dies at El Patron's funeral because El Patron poisons their drinks  so they would die with him.  At the funeral, Tam Lin dies also.  After all that Matt gains control of the Opium plantation and he destroys it.


One of the main themes in the book is person vs. society.  I think that because society allows other people to make clones for extra body parts.  Society also allows for people to do drugs. Society lets El Patron clone people because he is rich.  Person vs society is theme throughout the book.


I would recommend this book to other 7th grader readers because it never got boring.  Every chapter you would learn something about a character or a new character would come in.  Each chapter there is action in it that isn't boring. It is sad in some parts but there is more good parts.  This is why I would recommend this book to other 7th graders.