Happy Book Birthday, Schooled by Jamie Sumner!

 

I'm all smiles because it's time to shout-out another book birthday! Today's read hits the shelves tomorrow and promises all sorts of middle school life goodness. I'm expecting tons of weaves around friendship and family, and hope all of this is handled in a grabbing, smooth way. 

So, let's open it up and take a look!

Also, it's Monday, which means it's time for the weekly MMGM list. Middle grade literature fans and knowers get together to give their recommendations for the weeks or other thoughts on the middle grade realm. So, if you're looking for reads for this age group, head on over HERE and see what's what on that front!

SCHOOLED

by Jamie Sumner

Atheneum Books

Middle Grade Fiction

224 pages

ages 10 and up

Eleven-year-old Lenny Syms is about to start college—sort of. As part of a brand-new experimental school, Lenny and four other students are starting sixth grade on a university campus, where they’ll be taught by the most brilliant professors and given every resource imaginable. This new school is pretty weird, though. Instead of hunkering down behind a desk to study math, science, and history, Lenny finds himself meditating, participating in discussions where you don’t even have to raise your hand, and spying on the campus population in the name of anthropology.

But Lenny just lost his mom, and his Latin professor dad is better with dead languages than actual human beings. Lenny doesn’t want to be part of some learning experiment. He just wants to be left alone. Yet if Lenny is going to make it as a middle schooler on a college campus, he’s going to need help. Is a group of misfit sixth graders and one particularly quirky professor enough to pull him out of his sadness and back into the world?

AMAZON    /      GOODREADS

MY TIDBITS

Lenny is eleven and headed to college. Well, sort of. After the passing of his mother due to cancer, his father has decided to homeschool him. Together with three other 6th graders, his father, a Latin professor at the college, wants to use the college resources as a background to the school day...which is somewhat weird and definitely doesn't take a traditional mold. Each day of the week is devoted to an activity: meditation, observing students, auditing classes. There is a general project due at the end of the semester, though. Thanks to a literature professor Lenny befriends, Lenny figures out a theme pretty quick, but his dad doesn't like it. Not that his dad pays attention to him much, anyway. 

 Lenny's school day is anything but normal as he roams the campus and takes in the life and knowledge around him. The lack of structured learning, math, reading assignments, and will, no doubt, have readers wondering if they could leave their classrooms for that type of school, too. Even Lenny's new friendships offer fun and support to make this an unique and inviting world.

The grief after the loss of the mother remains at the center of this read as Lenny not only deals with his own emotions but battles with those of his father. There are quite a few reads, right now, which deal with the loss of a loved one (too many). This one hits the topic with a slightly different twist and looks at the difficult parental relationships which can occur.  The father's attitude weighs down and keeps a serious tone to the read the entire way through. But this builds a nice arc by the end and leaves with a sense of hope.

It's a smooth read and fits the suggested audience level. I would suggest this one as a solid middle grade read and not just for the upper end, though. There were some questionable aspects on the realistic end of the homeschooling in regards to state regulations, ability of 6th graders to meld so well on the campus, and such, but this won't bother readers, and doesn't break the flow of the story, either. 

Readers which dream of college or wonder how it would be to spend time in a school, where exchanging test answers is encouraged, will be intrigued by this one.

 

And here she is...

Jamie Sumner is the author of Roll with It, Time to Roll, Rolling On, Tune It Out, One Kid’s Trash, The Summer of June, Maid for It, Deep Water, Please Pay Attention, and Schooled. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications. She loves stories that celebrate the grit and beauty in all kids. She is also the mother of a son with cerebral palsy and has written extensively about parenting a child with special needs. She and her family live in Nashville, Tennessee. Visit her at Jamie-Sumner.com.