Mr. Cool: Mudshark by Gary Paulsen

This is the Principal. Would the custodian report to the faculty restroom with a large stick, safety goggles, and a respirator mask? And would whoever took the erasers from room two of three please return them and refrain from removing erasers in the future? And also, while it is loose, and in spite of what I said in the last announcement, the gerbil is not, per se, a wild animal and will not, repeat, will not attack. So please refrain from screaming or otherwise panicking should you see said gerbil.

Will Mud... Lyle Williams please report to the principal's office? Immediately.

When Lyle (a.k.a. Mudshark), so-called because of his incredibly cool agility and deadly skills at the local version of rugby, is summoned to the principal's office, the harried Mr. Wagner recruits his noted skills of observation and unerring recall at unraveling the ongoing mystery of the disappearing erasers, which is spreading to every classroom in the school. That issue would seem one of Mr. Wagner's lesser worries--there's a serious population explosion in the school's cycle-of-life crayfish experiment, and a renegade hamster apparently being pursued through the HVAC ducts 24/7 by AWOL teacher Mr. Patterson. And about what is going on in that faculty bathroom--don't even ask!

Mudshark is one of those inevitably cool kids, doted upon by the faculty and reverenced by his peers for his innate coolness, but his reputation is no accident. With his skills of observation honed by multitasking--rescuing his toddler triplet sisters from untoward encounters with electric outlets and tasty-looking lumps in the cat litter while seemingly reading everything he encounters and remembering everything he observes, Mudshark is that rare 'tweener boy--one who thinks.

Yes, he owed his speed and attention to detail to Kara, Sara, and Tara.

But the way he moved wasn't why Mudshark was cool.

Mudshark knew cool wasn't in how you moved or a name or clothes or whether or not you were asked to play on anyone's team.

It was all in the way thoughts ran through your mind, the way you managed the flow of electrical changes jumping from one brain cell to another to form ideas.

That's what makes somebody who they are. And that's why Mudshark was so cool.

He thought.

And Mudshark knows that he needs to engage all his thinking processes to figure out just what is going on at his school. For one thing, there's a talking parrot, the newest pet of librarian Mrs. Underdorf, who seems to be supplanting Mudshark in his role as school solver of mysteries. That parrot seems to know everything despite the fact that he is supposedly always locked in a cage in the library. Mud knows that he must solve the missing eraser mystery before the parrot does to keep his cool status at school. And he knows that the place to start has to be in close observation of the school's overworked custodian, a faceless mop-wielding nonentity to the rest of the school, but whom Mudshark discovers is recovering PTSD viction of Vietnam whose basement mop room is a museum of fine art and Baroque music and who reads everything from Plato to Mark Twain. He also fancies himself "The Custodian of Joyful Things," including, as Lyle learns, one errant gerbil and student creations on the school's blackboards, the preservation of which has become an obsession which has rendered him incapable of erasing the boards at day's end.

Mudshark quickly intuits the root of Mr. Wagner's eraser mystery, but his solution requires some delicacy, which ultimately involves Betty Crimper's Foul Odor Elixir cooked up in science lab, Mrs. Downside's sometimes evil cat, his buddy Kyle's amazing disappearing tricks, and avoidance training for the big-mouthed parrot. Mudshark and his curious crew carry off the plot, even bringing Mr. Patterson home from his obsessive diversion through the duct work in the process. All is almost all well.

This is the principal. I cannot stress strongly enough that, for your own safety and per the restrictions of Homeland Security, to whom, by the way, we'd like to offer a warm welcome, you please refrain from going anywhere near the faculty restroom. Oh, and great news about Mr. Patterson. While he hasn't caught the gerbil, his application for another summer of teaching wilderness camp has been approved. Way to go, Mr. Paterson!

Although Paulsen exercises literary license in keeping the veil intact over the mystery in the faculty bathroom, he manages to keep middle readers laughing all the say through this deft and comic school story. A short (83-page) and snappy outing, along the lines of his hit comedy Lawn Boy, in Mudshark (Random House, 2009) Paulsen proves that he's still the king of boy protagonist comedy in this quirky page-turner in which anyone who's ever eaten the Prune Liver Surprise in a school lunchroom will feel right at home.

Top 6 1/2 Worst Things about Middle School: How to Survive Middle School by Donna Gephart

The first day of summer vacation is important, because what you do that day sets the tone for the rest of the summer.

David Greenberg's hopes for a great post-sixth-grade vacation turn out to be a bummer of a prophecy. He can't wait for his best friend Elliott to come over so that they can video another episode of TalkTime, a comedy series David bases on his idol Jon Stewart's Daily Show. Hammy the hamster is ready for his Hammy Time skit, and teen sister Lindsay is sure to furnish an unsuspecting appearance in his "Daily Acne Forecast" segment.

But Elliott would rather head for the mall and hang around hoping for a glimpse of the suddenly fascinating Cara. David's summer days turn into lonely solo appearances on TalkTime without his sidekick Elliott, as their time together is totally taken up with interminable conversations centered around anguished (to the as-yet unsmitten David) discussions of "Does Cara Epstein like me?" David misses his agorophobic mother who abruptly left the family months before, and even at a family pool party finds his cousin only too willing to scare him spitless with tales of the upcoming terrorizing trials of "Harmone" Middle School, most of them ending with some poor kid getting flushed in the boys' room by the perennial, ever-flunking, ever-flushing school bully Tommy Murphy.

It's a bummer summer. But, then, on the first day of school, David is devastated when Elliott assures him that school uniforms are verboten on the first day, and David is the only kid who shows up looking like a loser in a ratty tee. But before he can even let Elliott know how he feels about this prank, Elliott snubs him for the "Neanderthal table" at lunch presided over by the hulking Tommy Murphy.

Short and small for his age, David has to take refuge with the lunch nerds for the first time in his life, and as the weeks go by barely manages to escape Tommy Murphy's promise to beat him up. His only bright spot are his TimeTalk videos, especially the one in which, lacking Elliott, he uses a magazine cover Jon Stewart as straight man. Despite his loneliness, David senses that this one is a winner and uploads it to YouTube along with the others. Then, amazingly, David does make one friend, the curly-haired charmer Sophie, who chooses him as a project partner and loves his comedy videos, enthusiastically emailing links to her former home-schooling friends network.

Suddenly David's YouTube videos go viral, and he finds himself a local media phenom, being interviewed by the local newspaper and a sort-of famous writer from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Still David feels like a nobody. What use is a million hits on YouTube while everyone at Harmon Middle School calls him by Murphy's nickname, "Lameberg." Even his sister, finally moved by the publicity to look at his uploaded videos, is embarrassed and outraged by her "acne forecast" role and isn't speaking to him. His dad orders him to take all the TalkTime video down immediately. And then, the final coup de grace on what seems the worst day of David's life, he finds Hammy dead, and almost loses it in science class, rushing out to hide his tears in the boys' bathroom, where he is ambushed by none other than Murphy, who finally submits David to that adolescent rite of passage, the "twirlie" in the latrine. To make the humiliation even worse, another kid gives the alarm to his teacher and David emerges, dripping with filthy toilet water and still weeping, to see his whole science class with their teacher watching outside the bathroom door.

It looks like things couldn't get worse. But then, Jon Daly sees his videos and loves them, even scheduling "his future replacement's" clips for an upcoming show. Will coast-to-coast media glory save David Greenberg's middle school years?

Donna Gephart, author of 2008's very funny and timely As If Being 12 3/4 Isn't Bad Enough, My Mother Is Running for President!, has in her latest How to Survive Middle School (Delacorte, 2010) a poignant yet hilarious tale of early adolescent angst which flows like a feature film script. All the characters are believable, and David himself is a particularly appealing character, confronted by the often incomprehensible mores of middle school, as a "wimpy kid" who uses his special talents to find his own place in both the middle school and the wider world as best he can. Kids, er, looking forward to their first days in the middle-school milieu will especially enjoy Gephart's story of how one boy makes it.

Juvenile Justice: Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer by John Grisham

Theo Boone knew of no other kid who hung around a law office every day after school. Most of his friends were playing baseball or soccer, or hanging around the house waiting on dinner. And there he was sitting in a dark law library pondering the events of the past hour.

He loved the place--the rich smell of worn leather and old rugs and dusty law books. The air of importance.

How could it be that he, Theodore Boone, of all the people in Strattenburg, knew the truth about the Duffy murder?

Starry-eyed young athletes whose field of daydreams has them becoming football or basketball or baseball greats abound in children's lit. There are even some notable kid detectives who dream of following Sherlock into great careers in crime-solving. But a boy barrister wannabe who longs for a life in a dusty law library and a role in the thick of courtroom drama?

Apparently not the impossible dream for John Grisham, best-selling author of legal thrillers, who has turned his considerable storytelling talents to writing for the children's and young adult market in his latest Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer (Dutton, 2010).

Theo Boone is the only son of two workaholic lawyers, one who maintains his own "of-counsel" office in his parents' building and already has built up a substantial, if non-paying, clientele among his junior high friends who need legal advice. When a notorious murder trial begins in the local courthouse, Theo is in jurisprudence paradise, even negotiating an all-day field trip with family friend Judge Gantry for his government class to observe the opening day of the proceedings. The kids all agree that the defendant, admittedly in financial straits, is guilty of the strangulation death of his wife to collect her million-dollar insurance policy, but there is no physical evidence at the site and the accused was seen playing golf alone at the time of the assault at the nearby Waverly Creek course. Experienced court watcher Theo has to point out that the prosecutor's case is weak and that defendant Peter Duffy will likely walk.

But then classmate Julio Pena approaches Theo and privately confides that his cousin, an illegal alien groundskeeper at the Waverly golf court, is sure that he saw Duffy speed up on a cart, carefully draw on both golfing gloves, enter the murder house and leave hastily ten minutes later.

Julio begs Theo to intervene with his friend Judge Gantry to stop the murderer from going free without revealing the cousin's identity. But Theo knows that with the trial already moving swiftly to the deliberative phase, he is going to have to have more definitive evidence before Judge Gantry will declare a mistrial. Torn between his promise to Julio to protect his cousin from jailing and deportation and his own responsibility to avert a grievous miscarriage of justice, Theo realizes that this time he must make a judicious decision that will change several lives.

Grisham's forte is, of course, fast-paced, page-turning storytelling which incorporates both investigation and courtroom drama into the plot, and the best-selling author uses this same formula to good effect in his first effort directed to the kid marketplace. Unlike his 2005 adult thriller, The Client, which featured a young fugitive as a principal character, however, this novel falls a little short in full character development. Major and minor characters are sketched out in typically skillful but broad strokes, with Theo's parents drawn pretty much to type and the middle school milieu given fairly short shrift. In this regard John Grisham could take some valuable lessons from children's writers, who often show great talent for building page-turning plots around believable young characters of some depth and complexity--especially from his fellow adult mystery authors, notably Robert B. Parker (Edenville Owls and The Boxer and the Spy) and the Newbery-winning Carl Hiaasen (Hoot, Flush, and Scat), whose crossover ventures into children's literature have been memorable.

Still a young hero who specializes in one of the thinking professions is a promisingly novel role model for middle readers, and Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer shows real potential as an ongoing series hero if John Grisham chooses to focus his lucrative storytelling skills toward the young adult genre. With the late Robert B. Parker regrettably out of the game and the best-selling Harry Potter and Percy Jackson as powerful boy protagonists pulling in the readers, it's a fertile field with a long tail of sales just waiting for Grisham to jump in with both feet.

Both Sides Now: Faith, Hope, and Ivy June by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

"Ivy June," Mamaw says, "this may be your one chance to see what the rest of the world is like." (Not taking Africa and China into account, of course.) But if Lexington's all I'm going to get, I figure I'll take it."

There are less than 100 miles between Ivy June Mosley's grandparents' house in Thunder Creek, Kentucky, and Catherine Combs' family home in a Lexington suburb, but it's almost as if the two girls have grown up in separate countries. But when Ivy June is selected to participate in a student exchange between her school and an upscale private girls' school up in the bluegrass country, she figures she'll do her best to be her grade's ambassador in the land of Lexington.

No children's writer puts the reader into the head of her characters any faster or better than Newbery Award winner Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, and inside their heads is the place where most of her just-published novel, Faith, Hope, and Ivy June, (Delacorte, 2009) finds its story. Ivy June travels out of the hollows of the Cumberland Mountains of southeast Kentucky and up I-75 to Lexington, taking more than just her batterd yellow suitcase with her. As she draws near her destination, Ivy June carries a load of anxiety over the discrepancy between the way her family lives and what she sees as the ways of the rest of the country. Ivy June's parents are hard-scrabble folks, with too little education and too many kids squeezed into their tiny house, so she willingly agreed to move into her Mamaw and Papaw's house just up the mountain. Even there, there's no bathroom, no telephone, and no cell phone service, but her grandparents have ample love and hope for better times for Ivy June.

In Lexington, Ivy June climbs into the short plaid-skirted uniform of Buckner Academy and sets off to school with Catherine, with worries about being taken for a hillbilly and embarrassing herself academically at the exclusive school. But despite some initial trepidation, her quick wit helps to break the ice with her wealthy classmates. Trips to the horse park to ride and to the opera house to see the musical Oklahoma! thrill Ivy June, and except for a quarrel with Catherine over mentioning phone calls from Catherine's "boyfriend" at a sleepover, the two weeks in Lexington go quickly. Glad to be on her way back home, Ivy June does admit in her journal that she could get used to her own indoor toilet and shower, hot water on demand, and short rides to school in Mr. Combs' comfortable car.

But when it's time for Catherine to come to visit with her, Ivy June is anxious about how her guest will see her living conditions and her family. Will she just see the stereotypes--tiny, crowded houses, outdoor privies, and missing teeth--or will she see her coal miner grandfather and worn-out mother for the hardworking, courageous people that she now knows them to be?

And after Catherine adjusts to doing without daily shampoos and taking a Saturday night bath in a tin tub, she begins to fit in. The girls explore the mountains, just beginning to bloom into early spring, meet other seventh-grade boys and girls to dance and flirt in the parking lot at Earl's Store on Saturday night, and gradually deepen the growing bond between them.

But it is when Catherine learns that her mother has been taken to Cleveland for emergency heart surgery that she feels most alone and isolated in Thunder Creek. Still, the Mosleys do all they can to comfort her, and when Ivy June's grandfather is caught in a sudden flood inside the mine and feared dead, Catherine comes to understand how much alike the girls' families are in their love for each other.

And Catherine confides to her journal that indeed Ivy June's life has some advantages:

"One of the differences between my family and Ivy June's is that in hers, every last child is expected to help out in some way.

Peter and Claire and I...we're loved, I know...but I don't have the feeling we're really needed.

Here in Thunder Creek, it's like a big family. Like everyone is related. The same mountains that separate these people from the rest of the world seem to keep them close to each other, and for that, I wonder if Ivy June knows just how lucky she is."

Wipe Out! Science Fair by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson

Toby Harbinger, backpack slung over his left shoulder, hurried through the halls of Hubble Middle School. His goal was to get to Gifted Science before the ME kids got there.

ME was short for Manor Estates, a development of giant houses that cost millions of dollars and had more bathrooms than people. Toby knew that, based on the laws of averages, there should be at least one Manor Estates kid who was not a total jerk, but so far he had not met that kid.

The ME kids stuck together. They wore expensive clothes that were designed to look used. They made fun of kids who wore clothes that really were used.

Such as Toby.

Tony's used to being called Hardbonger and having his sneakers ridiculed daily. But when he thinks he's on the trail of hard evidence that the ME kids are paying to have someone build their prize-winning science fair entries, he's had enough. With his friends Micah and Tamara, he gets his hands on a crucial piece of evidence, a buying list of top-security high tech hardware and tails the ME kids to a dark little mall shop called The Science Nook where the quirky owner seems to be taking orders from the kids for projects constructed from these components. So all Toby has to do is turn over his evidence to his hard-nosed principal, a.k.a., The Hornet, and all wrongs will be righted, right?

But what Toby doesn't (yet) know is that Hubble Middle School's lowly science fair is the nexus of a sinister plan to bring down the government and economy of the entire United States, a plot which involves a sleeper cell embedded at the school--one brilliant terrorist dispatched by the crude but power-mad ruler of Kprshtskan whose malevolent ploy is to use the clueless ME students' projects as the matrix of a move to take over the entire power grid of North America.

"It's an electromagnetic pulse," said Sternabite. "It's usually detonated by a nuclear detonation, but there are other ways. That's what's going on here." Sternabite pointed toward the ME kids' projects. "He's going to shut the power down again, and then he's going to discharge a capacitor bank into the grid. He's going to fry all the electronics in Washington, D.C. You understand what that means?"

"No," said Turow, "And I--"

"It means the government goes down. Most of the federal government computers are lost, along with a major chunk--a huge chunk of data. All erased. There are no records, no communications, no money coming in or going out. .... The economy goes, civil society collapses, and the United States stumbles back to the Stone Age."

All this sounds like the plot for a grim sci fi thriller, littered with laser blasted bodies. But pro writers Ridley Pearson's and Dave Barry's latest collaboration, Science Fair is actually one of the funniest middle school sagas you'll ever read. Barry and Pearson are equal-opportunity satirists who manage to skewer everyone--from the pompous President of the United States to bumbling FBI men, sweaty middle school teachers catering to privileged pupils and their powerful but oblivious parents, two wild-and-crazy-guys/terrorists from a central Eurasian country with a fondness for the home shopping network, and authentically costumed middle-aged Star Wars groupies. There are levitating frogs, a giant Mentos and Diet Coke experiment which floods Hubble Middle's gym with a tsunami of zero calorie foam, and even the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile which stars in the story's final chase scene.

In almost 400 quick-turning pages and a laugh a minute, this one will keep middle readers (and all fans of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dave Barry's inimitable wit and style) engrossed and chuckling all the way to the closing page, which ends with a tantalizing foreshadowing of a sequel. That's a good thing, because Science Fair is one of those genuinely funny books which makes you genuinely sad to finish.

And for a tantalizing trailer (yes, books now have trailers) take a sneak peek here.