A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Growing Up V: Jack's Black Book by Jack Gantos

In the last of the Jack Henry series (so far), the seventh grader's personal journal comes front and center in Jack's Black Book: What Happens When You Flunk an IQ Test? Jack returns to Ft. Lauderdale and enrolls in Sunrise Junior High, a super-scruffy loser of a school only superficially remodeled from its former iteration as a state penitentiary, where he dresses "like a combination mental-health outpatient and day laborer" to blend in with the local toughs. And Jack is off on his wackiest and most surreal school year of all.

First, Jack has to be retested in order to enter Sunrise Junior High, and his IQ comes back as low-normal, which prompts plenty of putdowns from his family. Next, he manages (again) to provide the opportunity for the death of the family's (third) dog, named BeauBeauIII by his newly Francophiliac sister Betsy. Hoping to make amends, Jack chooses "dog coffin" as his shop project, despite the teacher's warning that he will flunk unless he makes a gun rack, shoeshine kit, or canoe. When the shop coach actually fails him for not turning in his work, Jack winds up digging up the dead BeauBeau (twice) to get a passing grade.

Undaunted, Jack decides to become a writer and turn his worst experiences (of which there are now quite a few) into fame and fortune. To start his writing career, Jack and his little brother Pete set up a business at the beach, Jack offering to type up descriptive postcards and Pete pretending to be a blind photographer for beach-going tourists. As the summer winds down, Jack falls desperately in love with a college synchronized swimmer and hands over most of their hard-earned cash to arrange a blind date, falls (again) under the influence of the sleazy Pagoda family when he takes a job stealing political yard signs to help out Mr. Pagoda's campaign, and offers to dig up his dog coffin (again) as a prototype for Mr. Pagoda's next commercial venture.

Finally Jack comes to his senses, low-normal as they are alleged to be. As he clutches an English Leather-soaked handkerchief to his nose and contemplates digging up BeauBeauIII for the fourth time, the truth hits him like a shovel to the head:

"I knew I couldn't dig BeauBeau back up, not for any amount of money. BeauBeau was dead and buried. It was time for me to leave him in peace. And time for me to move on."

With a lot of laugh-out-loud moments, including some grossout guffaws at the scene of BeauBeau's re-disinterments, Jack's Black Book: What Happens When You Flunk an IQ Test? (Jack Henry) (Jack Henry) is the story of an irrepressible kid who tells it like it is as he ricochets his way through early adolescence. Boys particularly will find Jack's zigzag coming of age funny and poignant as he struggles through the transition from boyhood to young manhood.