SMARTY

A fairly flat school election story about seventh-grader Stanley ""Marry"" Martinson, who is very smart in school (takes 9th-grade math) but otherwise a nonentity and never invited to parties. He decides to remedy this situation by running for class president. Set around 1950 but with corny dialogue even for that period, the story has Marty's family and neighborhood friends turn in to help him win the election. The slogan ""Be Smart with Martinson"" represents the gist of his campaign, and he succeeds in getting an indifferent student body worked up about the election--though his chief issue is the location of seventh-grade seats at football games. Marry loses by three votes to a popular and wealthy party-giver, but he has succeeded in becoming a presence and is immediately and happily appointed student representative to the PTA. There's much brother-sister banter with fluffy ninth-grader Helena and much word-for-word campaign-staff chatter, all of it too drab and slack to give the story zip.