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.

Review: Roll With It by Jamie Sumner

ROLL WITH IT

by Jamie Sumner

Atheneum Books

Middle Grade Contemporary

256 pages

ages 10 and up

The story of an irrepressible girl with cerebral palsy whose life takes an unexpected turn when she moves to a new town.

Ellie’s a girl who tells it like it is. That surprises some people, who see a kid in a wheelchair and think she’s going to be all sunshine and cuddles. The thing is, Ellie has big dreams: She might be eating Stouffer’s for dinner, but one day she’s going to be a professional baker. If she’s not writing fan letters to her favorite celebrity chefs, she’s practicing recipes on her well-meaning, if overworked, mother.

But when Ellie and her mom move so they can help take care of her ailing grandpa, Ellie has to start all over again in a new town at a new school. Except she’s not just the new kid—she’s the new kid in the wheelchair who lives in the trailer park on the wrong side of town. It all feels like one challenge too many, until Ellie starts to make her first-ever friends. Now she just has to convince her mom that this town might just be the best thing that ever happened to them!

MY TIDBITS

Determination, heart and clever spunk make Ellie a girl to follow and root for until the end.

Ellie's life is all right. There are some troubles, but all in all, she deals with things and takes challenges as they come. Until too many come. The one great change is that her seizures seem to be gone, and she can stop taking the medicine she's learned to hate. But with her father more interested in his new family than her, her grandpa's quickly worsening Alzheimer, her mother's idea to move to Oklahoma to help Ellie's grandparents, and being the new kid in school have overshadowed any happiness her health might have brought along. Somehow, Ellie's going to have to figure out how to deal with all of it.

Ellie has cerebral palsy and has to deal with the troubles it causes every day of her life. This does frustrate her at times, but it's not the only problem she has. While this book does demonstrate the everyday challenges Ellie faces thanks to her personal situation, it also presents issues young readers face themselves. Being raised by a single parent, watching grandparents face diseases like Alzheimer, and simply dealing with bullying due to economic or other differences are problems kids will recognize and sympathize with.

While Ellie does grow frustrated, she never gets depressed but rather works her way through things. This alone makes this type of character refreshing. Plus, she's got quite a bit of spunk, which makes her even more fun. The addition of a love for cooking/baking give her a well-rounded personality and offer an interesting hobby, which might draw the interest of some readers as well.

The pacing flows nicely, and there's always something happening which makes the book hard to put down. Ellie is fully aware of what each problem truly means, and this does make her seem a little mature for her age sometimes. I was a little surprised how long it took for her to actually get to the new school, but there are enough familiar problems to keep things rolling as it is. It is an interesting read with a fun character, and I'm sure kids ages 9 to 12 will enjoy it.


And here she is...

Jamie Sumner's 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 and is the author of the middle grade novel Roll With It. She is also the mother to a son with cerebral palsy and lives with her family in Nashville, Tennessee. Visit her at Jamie-Sumner.com.