Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie

Drums, Girls, And Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was a terrific story, it had me laughing and crying. The author totally understands the middle school boy's mind and manners. It deals with a serious subject: a younger brother has leukemia. The author does a great job of showing how a family really copes with all that this means.

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New Boy by Julian Houston

New Boy by Julian Houston


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a very interesting book about the end of segregation, told by a high school sophmore from Virginia in the late 1950's. Rob has enrolled in an all-white Connecticut boarding school,but he feels that he doesn't "belong" anywhere. Rob has some eye-opening experiences during this very history-making school year. He meets Malcolm X on a walk through Harlem, and participates in a lunch counter sit-in back home in Virginia.

My only problem with this book is that the writing is a bit stiff. I don't know if middle-school students would get in to it, but perhaps high school students might.

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