This month's book reviews

An assignment to be funny is a lot harder
than just being a class clown

Bobby Garrick thinks he's pretty funny. He's always making jokes - in his classroom, on the school bus, at home - everywhere. The trouble is many of his jokes hurt other people's feelings and he just doesn't know when to quit. Even his likable fifth grade teacher, Mr. Matous, is losing patience with him. The school principal is threatening to send Bobby to the School for Intervention, one step away from Reform School, if he doesn't start doing his schoolwork and start taking school seriously.

Bobby's teen-aged older brother had already been kicked out of school and had left home. Bobby thought it was unfair that he was being criticized for being like his brother. After all, all he did was just joke around, not get into any real trouble.

The kids had been given the assignment to write a plan for some sort of school project. Bobby, off the top of his head, suggested that the school have a school-wide laugh-off day. The teachers and the kids could compete in telling jokes to see who would be picked as the funniest. To his astonishment, his teacher and the principal thought it was a good idea. Bobby was given the job of picking a date, organizing the day, setting up rules, and screening participants. In addition, besides competing in the joke contest himself, he was picked to be the master of ceremonies. What had he gotten himself into? He had to do well in order for his teacher and the principal to stop being mad at him. Besides, he had to prove that he really was not just a jokester but a comedian with real promise for a future in comedy. Talk about pressure!

In this paperback, every chapter starts off with a joke. Examples include: What's round and has a bad temper? (A vicious circle!). Why is it so easy to fool vampires? (Because they're suckers!) There is a serious side to the story, though. Bobby has to figure out why he is compelled to try to be funny, even when humor is not appropriate. As readers, we find out, even before Bobby finally realizes what the problem is.

 

What happens when there is no teacher
in a classroom full of kids?

Mr. Fabiano was the sixth grade teacher. He was known as "Mr. Fab" to his sixth graders and they all liked him. One Friday, Mr. Fab had to take a day off from school. Mrs. Muchmore, the substitute teacher who had been lined up, woke up on Friday morning and was too ill to come to school. Her message to the school office had been misplaced. So, guess what? When the school day started, there was a room full of sixth graders with no teacher and nobody knew about it.

What was the class to do? A couple of rowdy kids wanted to start raising a rumpus right away. But they soon realized that if they called attention to themselves, the principal would make some kind of arrangements…ones they might not like. After a group discussion, a vote was taken. All but one kid in the class voted to try to run the day on their own without any adult supervision. Jessica Cooke, the one girl who voted against it argued that is was illegal for kids to be without a teacher, that it was unsafe, and that they would all get into trouble anyway. But, right or wrong, the kids decided to try it on their own.

Karen Ballard, who is the smartest kid in the class, tries to run the class pretty much as Mr. Fab would operate on an ordinary Friday. There were the expected complications like getting the attendance report and the lunch orders to the office and deciding what to do about going to music and explaining to other teachers where the substitute was. There were also unexpected complications, like Rachel White, who hadn't spoken for six months and only communicated, even with her own family members, by writing notes. She had not spoken since the death of a classmate, Tommy Feathers. There was Bastian Fauvell, a kid from a military family, whose father had just been transferred. It was Bastian's last day at the school. Would there be any kind of "farewell party"?

It is surprising how many twists and turns a story can take when it's just about a class on a day when no teacher is present.

 

Not just one but seven
thought-provoking short stories

In the first short story, Willie Markham, a sixth grader who lives in a fifth floor apartment with his mother, tries to understand what makes people unhappy and what can be done about it. His first efforts are with a ragged, dirty-faced man, who sat on a plastic milk crate in front of the apartment building. His mother, of course, wants him to ignore the man.

A second story is about Matt Kaiser, another sixth grader, who is known as 'the baddest of the bad." We find out what it takes to turn a guy who works at being bad into a really good guy. It was rough on him as well as members of his gang.

A third plot involves another sixth grader - a girl whose personal phone rings at four o'clock on many days after school. Nobody is there… The girl gets to the place where she talks at great length on the phone, but no one ever answers her back. Is it Brian, her brother who ran away last year?

There are seven stories in all. The major character in each one is a middle school level kid. If you like short stories, all of which seem to have an unexpected ending, this is the book for you.

 

A girl risks her life to save an
injured pilot whale and its calf

Seventh grader Koby Easton is twelve years old. When she was eight, a speeding car cost her a right foot while she was riding her bike. Even though her over-protective mother and some of her school classmates wouldn't let her forget she was missing a foot, Koby tried to live as active and normal a life as possible.

Koby and her parents live on a sailboat anchored in the Florida Keys. Her father has a powered fishing boat and every day goes out to run his lobster traps. There are two rubber dinghies tied to the sailboat. The smaller one belongs to Koby, and when she is out on the water, she comes close to forgetting that she has only one foot.

Koby is troubled by her parents' constant fighting with each other. Her mother complains about the father being gone all the time. She clearly does not like living on the water. Koby's father, on the other hand, loves the feeling of freedom and independence that comes from owning their own home on the water. He encourages Koby to be independent and try just about anything on the water, even if she has only one good leg. The mother is angered by the father's attitude and wants Koby to be much less active and to take no risks of any kind.

At the beginning of the story, Koby is out in her dinghy and discovers a pilot whale that is wrapped up in a fishing net and seems very near death. Koby risks going into the water and cutting the net off the whale. While trying to help the whale recover and breathe normally, she finds that the whale has a newborn calf. Koby feels she has to stay with the pair to keep the mother alive so she can nurse her new baby. As it grows dark, Koby is cold and frightened. She knows her parents will be frantic. She can only hope someone will come out looking for her.

Being stranded in the water with the two whales is just the beginning of the story. There are plenty of other adventures, including surviving a hurricane, to keep any reader absorbed in Koby's struggle to save the whales, save her parents' marriage, and to simply lead a normal life.