This month's book reviews

A boy is marooned on a Pacific island with a Japanese soldier from WWII

Michael, an English boy, was almost eleven when his mom and dad found out the company they worked for was going out of business. Life became difficult as his parents looked for new jobs. Finally, his father left them to look for work in another city. Some weeks later he sent for them to join him in a town on the seacoast. To their surprise, the new home he showed them was a 42-foot sailing vessel. His plan was for the family to sail around the world. All they had ever done before was, for fun, to sail a small boat on an inland reservoir.

Michael's mother was to be the "skipper." His dad, who was handy with tools, was to be the crew and maintenance man. Michael was to be home schooled on the boat and to try to help out as much as he could. Their dog, Stella, was to go along as a companion.

Mom and dad trained for several months under an old sea captain. He taught them how to navigate and to survive at sea. When they finally set out, their first destination was Spain. They made stops in Africa as they sailed around that continent toward the Pacific and Australia. They spent some time with an uncle on a big ranch before sailing on into the Pacific.

Unfortunately, one night when his exhausted parents were sleeping down below, Michael fell overboard as he was trying to pull Stella to safety. She had been on deck without her safety harness. They both were frantically trying to stay afloat as their boat sailed away from them.

Michael woke up on a sandy beach on the shore of what he later found out was a small island. He was happy when Stella came running up to him on the beach. The big question was could they find water to drink and enough food to survive. There were coconuts, but they were high up in trees too tall for Michael to climb. The strange noises coming out of the thick forest were a little unnerving as well.

Michael figured out that the noises were coming from apes that lived on the island. He knew there had to be food and water that the apes lived on, but he couldn't find it. One morning, he was surprised to find bowls of water and some dried fish left for him to eat. He knew there had to be another human on the island.

The human that Michael finally met was Kensuke, the name that is in the book's title, "Kensuke's Kingdom." You have to read the book to find out whether the aged and mysterious Kensuke turned out to be a friend or an enemy. Will the two be able to communicate at all? Will Michael ever be able to rejoin his family or will Kensuke persuade him to stay on the island forever?

 

A sixth-grader with weird parents decides he was likely switched at birth

Guy Strang likes things orderly. He always does his homework, never acts out in class, and genuinely likes math. His parents, on the other hand, are totally unpredictable. In fact, that's the only thing predictable about them - you never know what they might do next. As her idea of a favor to him, his artistically inclined mom took his favorite baseball cards and decoupaged them onto a lampshade so he could look at them all at once. Did she ask him? Nooo! She even tie-dyes all his underwear. The clothes and shoes she wears and her weird wild-colored hairdo set her apart from any other mother in the whole neighborhood.

If anything, Mr. Strang is even weirder. His favorite trick, which he thinks is so clever, is to suck a raw oyster up his nose and spit it out his mouth. In a restaurant! Then he laughs and tells everybody to not try this trick at home.

Guy discovers that the weirdest kid in his class, Bob-o Smith, has very organized and predictable parents. They have ordinary meals, wear ordinary clothes, and like peace and quiet around their home. Could Guy and Bob-o have been switched at birth? When Guy finds that both he and Bob-o were born on the same day and in the same hospital, he's just sure that they must have been switched accidentally at birth.

It's one thing to suspect such a mix-up, it's something else to get two sets of grown-ups to imagine such a possibility. Buzz, Guy's best friend, comes up with the idea to pretend that a social studies assignment requires the students to spend a week-end in another classmate's home. So Bob-o and Guy switch homes (and parents) for a week-end.

Well, things don't turn out quite the way Guy expects. Maybe having predictable parents isn't what it's cracked up to be. To find out how things work out for the two boys, you need to read the book.

 

The Diary of Melanie Martin: or how I survived Matt the Brat, Michelangelo, and the Leaning Tower of Pizza

Melanie Martin is in fourth grade. The big event in her life is that she is going with her family on a trip to Italy. Yes, that Italy - the one across the ocean in Europe. The bad news is that Matt the Brat, her six-year-old brother is going also. He's always doing things that bug Melanie. Because he is only six, though, everybody thinks he is so cute.

We are reading Melanie's diary entries as she prepares for the trip, travels by plane to Europe, and tours the famous spots in Italy. Melanie likes to write verses or little poems as part of her diary. So we get to read about Melanie's reactions to such places as the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Vatican. She sees famous artworks by Michelangelo and Leonardo de Vinci. Of course, all the time, she is putting up with Matt the Brat. When he gets lost, she is the one who feels guilty until he is found. His idea of eating out in Italy is to look for a McDonalds.

One of the things that Melanie can't forget about is that her Social Studies teacher is expecting a long poem about her family trip when she returns home. Melanie keeps trying, but she just can't seem to come up with something she wants the kids at school to hear. It's not until her trip home on the plane that she finally feels she can get it right. Her poem is even a surprise to her. It turns out that she really liked traveling with her family, including Matt the Brat.

 

Girl wants to change her image on entry into seventh grade

Lizzie Archer doesn't want to spend another year in school as the class nerd. Both her parents are college professors, and Lizzie really likes to read and learn. But being the smartest girl in class hasn't helped her make many friends, especially among the more popular girls and boys. As she enters seventh grade, a visiting aunt takes Lizzie shopping for new clothes. With a her new image, Lizzie has to decide whether she wants to go places and do things she really doesn't enjoy just to impress those in the popular crowd. She especially hates going to football games on cold Friday nights just so she can sit with girls that she wants to impress.

When paired in math class with a boy she has a crush on, she deliberately misses some math problems. She didn't want him to think she was smarter than he was. When the boy and the math teacher see through what she is doing, she is really embarrassed. The teacher, especially, knows how good she is at math and wants her to join the competitive math team. What would that do to her image? Can Lizzie find some way to be herself and still not be considered the class nerd?

The biggest test of all is when Lizzie attends dances held for the seventh and eighth graders. What should she wear? How should she act? Will boys ask her to dance? Lizzie finds out that being herself works much better for her than trying to act only to please those who think they make up the "popular crowd." You need to read the book to find out how she does it.