VVMBookBlog

14-year-old Arnold “Junior” Spirit is a Spokane Indian who has lived on the “rez” all his life.  He has an older sister whom he admires very much and a mother and father who love him, even though his father is a chronic alcoholic. Arnold has several disabilities due to his hydrocephaly or water on the brain, and has some physical conditions that make him a target for bullying.  And he has a talent for cartooning.

Arnold has always attended the school on the reservation but a classroom incident in the first days of his 9th grade year prompts one of his teachers to recommend that he leave the rez school for a better school–the nearest public school 22 miles away.  Now branded as a traitor to his reservation family, Arnold faces the many challenges to being a reservation Indian in a very white school.  He doesn’t back down from any challenge and doors open for him in every situation.

In spite of some tough social and living conditions in Arnold’s life, this book is funny, fun to read and hopeful.  It’s definitely for more mature readers who can read beyond just the words to the amazingly courageous person that is Arnold.

Here’s another book from the 2008 Maud Hart Lovelace list and what a great story!

Scott is nervous about going into high school as a freshman.  He and his friends have the usual problems with upperclassmen on those first few days of school.  But even as Scott is adjusting to high school, his world takes on a new dimension when his parents tell him that his mother is having a baby in the spring!  He’s kind of used to being the younger brother and the youngest kid, so what will this new creature do to his comfortable world?

Well, the combination of his school experiences and his still-embryonic sibling causes him to begin writing a survival manual for high school…and many other aspects of life.  In fact, his writing skills lead him to joining the school newspaper, and other school activities in his quest to get the attention of Julia, who suddenly turned beautiful over the summer!  Whatever he does in school has surprising results and usually no one is more surprised than Scott himself.

Very funny, very entertaining!  Lots of life lessons from Scott’s survival manual and journal (NOT a diary), but really funny and reader-friendly!

Capricorn Anderson, “Cap” for short, is in 8th grade and in a real school for the first time in his life. He’s been living in a ’60’s-like commune with only Rain, his grandmother, as his only parent, teacher or friend. When Rain hurts herself falling out of the plum tree picking plums, Capricorn has to enter school, and real society, for the first time.

As you can guess, the reaction of the students at Claverage Middle School wasn’t good. The tradition was that the geekiest kid in 8th grade would be elected class president and then would be the subject of bullying and wedgies for the whole year, or as long as he/she could take it. The tradition held true for Cap as he quickly found himself named class president and in charge of the big Halloween party! But as naive and innocent as Cap was, the whole “tradition of mean” just wasn’t working on him. In fact, other students were starting to LIKE HIM! Now what?

This book reminded me a little of Buddha Boy by Kathe Koja, but wasn’t as violent. And since Gordon Korman is the author, it’s very funny. If you like to see the underdog come out on top, this is the book for you. The fun part is how he gets there!

While researching his report on India and India’s political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi, Dave is inspired to do like Gandhi by not talking for a whole day. This personal challenge turns into a bet with his project partner, Lynsey, about which gender–boys or girls–in their grade could come out ahead in a 2-day no-talking contest. They developed some ground rules about how to answer teachers’ questions and then, as of the end of lunch time, the contest was on!

Teachers at their school weren’t sure how to deal with this contest, especially since this grade was know as the “Unshushables.” But, as in other Andrew Clements books such as Frindle, this turns into some interesting interactions between the “silent” students and their teachers and principal. Unfortunately the story is told about a group of 5th graders, but hopefully 6th grade readers can overlook that and see the fun and humor in No Talking.

Have I talked about a favorite book of the summer yet? Well, this might be it!

It’s fall in 1967 and Holling Hoodhood (strange name, yes!) has just started 7th grade in his Long Island town, close to New York City. On Wednesday afternoons most of the students in his class leave early for religious classes at the synagogue and Catholic church, leaving Holling with his teacher, Mrs. Baker. He’s pretty certain Mrs. Baker doesn’t like him from the start, especially when he realizes they will be spending their Wednesdays together reading Shakespeare’s plays.

The chapters in the book follow the months of the 1967-68 school year. The plot of the book centers around Holling’s “perfect” family (not!), problems with the bullies in Camillo Junior High School, and a budding romance with Meryl Lee, whose dad owns an architect firm that is in competion with that of Holling’s father.

The plot also centers around the major historical events of that year, including Vietnam War action, the political campaign of Robert Kennedy, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. All of these are skillfully interwoven against the backdrop of the characters and events in the Shakespeare plays Holling is reading. No, it doesn’t matter if you haven’t read any Shakespeare, but reading this book might make you WANT to read some Shakespeare!

It made me laugh and made me sad, but mostly it made me glad I read it!