All of the Above by Shelley Pearsall
April 4, 2007 — Mary Childs
Located in Cleveland, Ohio, Washington Middle School is at the end of a dead end street in a run-down neighborhood. Mr. Collins is an experienced math teacher, but he’s looking for ways to help his apathetic 7th grade math students care about school and math. So he challenges them to build a tetrahedron structure 7 levels high that would break the record set by a private school in California.
You probably know that a tetrahedron is a geometric solid with 4 sides, all equilateral triangles. Smaller tetrahedrons can be joined together to make bigger ones, and that’s the challenge Mr. Collins makes to this pretty unmotivated math class. The participants include James Harris III, Marcel, Rhondell, Sharice, Mr. Collins and others who might come along, and each person tells the story from their perspective. Each personal narrative also reveals things going on in their lives that affect who they are at school. And since Marcel’s father owns Willy Q’s Barbecue, the book also includes some recipes for barbecue sauces at various degrees of heat, and other items sold at Willy Q’s.
I enjoyed reading this book–it was a FAST read–and enjoyed celebrating the lows and highs of the project and their lives.
