July 2004     Vol.5 Issue 7

This month's book reviews

A remote Alaskan village and its one-room
schoolhouse makes for a good story

This touching story of a gifted teacher and her poverty-level students in a remote Alaskan Indian village is set in 1948. The author, Kirkpatrick Hill, had spent most of her teaching career in multiple-grade classes in remote Alaskan “bush” country. Her book “The Year of Miss Agnes” makes a strong case for non-traditional teaching methods, especially for dealing with classes that are made up of culturally different kids - in this case members of the Athabascan Indian tribe in Alaska. Any child who talks of being a teacher some day would find this book especially appealing.

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A sensitive portrayal of racial injustice
in the deep South of the early 1900’s

“The Well” is a thin novel written by Mildred D. Taylor, the author of the much-acclaimed “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.” The story is told using a ten-year-old black boy, named David, as narrator. The title, “The Well,” comes from the well on the farm of the Logan family, a black family.

The uneasy relationship between blacks and whites is upset when David’s thirteen-year-old brother stands up to two white boys, who are bullying ten-year-old David, who, at the time, is wearing a cast on his broken leg.

The humiliation and injustice that blacks endured in the South as a result of racial bigotry is graphically illustrated. In this one instance, however, justice is finally served as the racial bigots get their comeuppance.

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Another book by an author who pulls
all stops in trying to get boys to read

Todd Strasser, among other works, is author of the Camp Run-a-Muck series, with titles like “Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts” and “Mutilated Monkey Meat.” “Don’t Get Caught Driving the School Bus” is a story that is not quite as bad as the title may suggest. The key character in it is forced into driving the bus to save the lives of the occupants from an oncoming train.

From a middle grader’s perspective, Strasser’s book is about kids reacting against what they see as an oppressive establishment - the school. From a parent’s perspective, the book may be judged to be too encouraging of always trying to “put one over” on teachers, principals, and school bus drivers. Some of us may think kids don’t need much encouragement along those lines.

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A kids’ story that entertainingly makes
the point that losers are people too

Jerry Spinelli is one of the top-rated children’s authors of today. In “Loser,” he tells the story of a child classified by teachers and kids as a “loser” among losers. Donald Zinkoff’s strange behaviors and clueless misperceptions seem to make it easy to label him. With Spinelli’s matter-of-fact yet humorous style of storytelling, a youthful reader will emerge with a more humane and accepting attitude toward those too easily written off as “losers.”

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