This coming-of-age story tackles a serious issue with sensitivity and panache.
An accused troublemaker gets the chance to prove his innocence at an elementary school mock trial in Wopat’s middle-grade novel.
Thomas “Mac” McGregor, on his first day of fifth grade, lands in the principal’s office for something he may or may not have done. No one at his Wisconsin school is surprised, as Mac has been getting into trouble for years (“We can’t have another school year like the last, Mr. McGregor”). Much of that stems from his anger, which he struggles to control. Some people are sympathetic, like his patient new teacher, Ms. Justus, and his best friend, Julia St. John. But others enjoy riling him up, most notably Alex, a girl Mac is convinced hates him. It’s bad enough that only he is punished for a scuffle that Alex starts; it’s considerably worse when Julia is hurt, and Alex and others point fingers at Mac. Ms. Justus turns the class into a jury trial in which his peers will decide whether this boy with the short temper is guilty of harming his best friend. Wopat’s adolescent antihero is sublimely complex: Mac claps back, steeps his sarcasm in malice, and even shoves someone; however, there’s no doubt he strives to better himself, and, more than once, he manages to calm himself. Readers only get narrator Mac’s perspective, which deftly conveys his insecurities: Is Alex really out to get Mac? Will Julia decide that Alex is her new best friend? The novel, like Ms. Justus, goes to great lengths to understand Mac, a multilayered youngster with a lot going on in his head. The author’s breezy prose helps offset Mac’s general somberness and makes his upbeat turns shine brighter. Everything leads to a mock trial that’s both revealing and entertaining; the razor-sharp student assigned to be Mac’s lawyer is a bona fide scene-stealer, and the other fifth graders are endearingly amateur jurists (someone needs index cards to explain why they’ve just objected).
This coming-of-age story tackles a serious issue with sensitivity and panache.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780998173696
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Lost Lake Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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BOOK TO SCREEN
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
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