Themes

Honesty Sports and privileged behavior
Perseverance Family issues
Overcoming social/class distinctions
The need to be accepted
Facing fear and overcoming it
Honesty in relationships

Analysis of the themes can be found in the Overall Analysis Section of the Study Guide.

Mood

Tangerine is written in a positive mood. It is the journal of a young man who is ready for what life has to offer. He is good at “rolling with the punches.”

Edward Bloor - Biography

Edward William Bloor was born October 12, 1950 in Trenton, New Jersey. He graduated from Fordham University in 1973. After college he worked as a junior high and high school English teacher in the Orlando, Florida area. He married Pamela Dixon, also an English teacher, in 1984 and they have two children, a daughter and a son. The Bloors live in Winter Garden, Florida.

Perhaps you have heard someone tell a beginning writer to write about what they know. That is a good suggestion. It is what Edward Bloor did when he wrote Tangerine, his first novel. Mr. Bloor, like Paul, his protagonist in Tangerine, played soccer as a child and in high school and college. He lived in the real area where he located his fictional setting, Tangerine. He observed firsthand the changes that were occurring as the citrus groves were replaced by housing developments as happened in his novel. While some readers may think that the muck fires that burn for months, the sinkholes and the deadly lightning are just products of this writer’s fertile imagination, in fact they are common occurrences in the area and frequent topics on the nightly news.

Edward Bloor has written three more books since he wrote Tangerine.
They are:
Crusader
Story Time
London Calling

Like Tangerine, Crusader is set in Florida. The title refers to a game in the arcade where Roberta Ritter, the protagonist, works. There are twice as many pages in Crusader as are in Tangerine. The novel keeps the reader’s interest just as easily as Tangerine does.

Story Time is more humorous than Mr. Bloor’s first two novels. But it has a serious side to it as well. The author seems to be telling his young readers not to take standardized tests too seriously. Rather, concentrate on learning all you can. The tests are not really about the students taking them.

London Calling is about time-travel and about the era of the Second World War.

He will finish a fifth book, titled Taken, in October, 2007. It is set in the future.

Awards for Tangerine
American Library Association Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults, 1998
Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination for Best Young Adult Novel, 1998
American Booksellers Association Pick of the List, 1997
New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing, 1997