Big Brother to the Rescue: Ellray Jakes the Dragon Slayer by Sally Warner

"Are you paying any attention to me at all, EllRay Jakes?” Mom asks from the driver’s seat of our car, a Toyota so old they don’t even make them anymore.

"Wait. What?" I said, turning off my video game.

"I was saying, go inside and sign Alfie out,” Mom says. “And tell her to hurry, please. I’m afraid to turn the engine off. Darn car battery,” she scowls.

Ellray dashes into the daycare center, and not finding Alfie with her class, he ducks out to the outdoor play area. Yep, Alfie is with her four friends. But as he gets closer, he sees three of the little girls are together and Alfie is by herself. One of the three, Suzette Monahan, pulls the others away and they start to play a game. Alfie has a funny look on her face.

Even her new pink coat looks sad.

"Alfie!" I call out, loud as I can. "Ice cream! After we go shopping for dolls!" I add, inspired. ("There! That ought to get 'em!" I think!)

Ellray Jakes is a third-grader, old enough to know four-year-old bullying when he sees it, and at home that night Alfie confides that Suzette Monahan is being mean to her, telling the other kids to pretend that she is invisible. Ellray knows a frienemy when he sees one. He checks his suspicions out with Mom after dinner.

"It's that Suzette Monahan, that little dickens," Mom says, scowling into the sink.

Suspicion confirmed. Suzette Monahan is the Dragon, and he, Ellray Jakes, has to be the big-brother dragon slayer.

And two can play at her game. In her Ellray Jakes the Dragon Slayer (Viking Books), author Sally Warner has her hero Ellray hoisting Suzette with her own petard to make sure that his little sister will not be shunned at nursery school ever again. And since what goes around comes around, Ellray suddenly finds himself the victim of the same sort of playground scheme. Author Warner's big brother Ellray gallantly rescues his little sister and stands up bravely for himself in this installment in Warner's successful series about the Jakes family. Author Warner skillfully portrays elementary school characters with honesty and insight, and illustrator Brian Biggs fills out the details with great good humor. Other titles in this popular beginning chapter fiction series are EllRay Jakes Stands Tall, EllRay Jakes the Recess King! and EllRay Jakes Is Not a Chicken.

King of Wheels! Trucker and Train by Hannah Stark

TRUCKER LOVED TO RULE THE ROAD.

He loves to roar down the road. He loves to see the little vehicles--mopeds, compact cars, and the petite pick-ups scurry to get out of his lane.

HONNNK! goes his big klaxen, clearing the way for his big wheels to roll past them all.

But then, cresting the hill, Trucker sees something that makes even him take notice. WOOOOOOO! WHOOOOOO!

What's that? Trucker hits the gas and speeds up. It's Train!

TRUCKER GAWKED AT THE 2... 4.... 7... 8... 10 CARS PULLED BY TRAIN'S BIG BLACK ENGINE.

Train is fast, and his whistle is louder than Trucker's horn! There's a crossing ahead. Trucker has to brake, and so do the mo-peds, cars, and little pick-ups. Trucker is rumbling and grumbling.

WHY ARE WE THE ONES STOPPING?

Trucker roars off, heading up the mountain at full throttle, but as Train zooms by, Trucker's engine is forced to slow down on the steep slope. He grows angry as even the mo-peds pass him on the grade, and he can't wait to outrun them and beat Train all on the way down the mountain. But when he reaches the peak, he spots something far ahead that makes even his loud klaxen quail!

A BROKEN-OFF GATE!

WHAT IF NO ONE STOPS?

It's a real race now, not to win, but to get to the crossing and block the tracks to save the other little vehicles, in Hannah Stark's latest, Trucker and Train (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Clarion, 2019). Size and speed are useful in more than one way, and Trucker is everyone's hero. Stark's little parable of power is portrayed perfectly by Bob Kolar's simple geometrically-shaped rivals, set against bright white pages, each with its own job to do and his own way to do it. As Kirkus Reviews puts it, "Grab your CBs and hold onto your whistle. In this battle of truck vs. train, the true winners are the readers."

For more pun-filled power struggles, pair this one with Chris Barton's comic tale of those toy-box titans, Shark vs. Train (see review here).

"Love in Every Stitch" Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton

I recall a box of rags that someone gave us...

There were rags of many colors.

But every pieces was small.

And I didn't have a coat.

It was way down in the fall.

Even the worn hand-me-down britches little Dolly wore to school had patches, but that wasn't unusual back in the Tennessee hills in those days. But in Dolly's big family, one year there was no spare coat to pass down to her.

It was then that her mama turned to her rag box. None of the bits and pieces were big enough to use to make her a coat. But where there's a will, there's a way. Every mountain woman knew how to piece a quilt, and Dolly's mama surely did, too.

Mama sewed the the rags together.

Sewed every piece with love.

She made a coat of many colors

That I was so proud of.

As she sewed, Mama told Dolly the Biblical story of Joseph's many-colored coat, and little Dolly was proud and eager to wear her new coat to school.

But when she arrived at her school in her patchwork coat, she was met with stares and pointing, and even jeers from some of the students, who thought her coat was fit only for a scarecrow. Although Dolly's feelings were hurt, she still loved that coat, made with love.

And out of that memory the grown-up Dolly Parton also made her own "Coat of Many Colors," a famous song about that experience that helped people understand how she felt when she was bullied as a child.

Now I know we had no money

But I was rich as I could be

In my coat of many colors,

My mama made for me.

With the currently little-heard theme that love is worth more than possessions, the words to Parton's song in her just published picture book, Coat of Many Colors (Grosset and Dunlap, 2016), have a message worth hearing. Parton's sweet story, illustrated in a soft, loving pastel palette by Brook Boynton-Hughes, is a good read-aloud about the value of love shown in non-materialist ways. Says Kirkus Reviews, "Tender and heartfelt with a loving message."

Pair this one with Simms Taback's Caldecott-winning Joseph Had a Little Overcoat (Caldecott Medal Book) or Phoebe Gilman's Something From Nothing, both stories of a loving grandfather who turns his ragged blanket into a coat for little Joseph and successively smaller garments as he grows, both stories of how family love is what really keeps us warm in this world.

Gut Check: Gutless by Carl Deuker

Early in eighth grade I caught a break. Our goalie didn't show up for a game and Coach looked long and hard over his bench and said, "Brock, get in the goal." That game I stopped every shot.

I thought I was a natural goalkeeper--good hands, quick reactions, foot speed--I had it all. Then came the game against Addams Middle School.

We were winning, with only a few minutes left. The ball somehow popped loose, and a blond guy took off down the sideline.... bearing down on me. He wasn't trying to deke me either; he was coming right at me, intent on rolling right over me.

I knew what to do: charge him, cut down on his angle. I took a step and then fear paralyzed me. I took a step back, tripped, and fell. He roared right by me.

Brock knows he's failed the gut check moment. He now knows what he's suspected all long: he's absolutely terrified to take a hit.

And then, during that summer before high school, Brock is noticed by the father of the football team's quarterback Hunter Gates, who beckons him across the field. He's noticed Brock's speed on the soccer field and asks him to work with the passer as long receiver. Brock dislikes and fears the arrogant Hunter, but something makes him agree, a desire he didn't know he had. And it's true; Brock and Hunter click.

I caught Hunter's bullets--most of them. His father came over.

"Have you thought about playing football? With your speed and those hands you could be a star."

He winked. "Girls go for wide receivers. You could have your pick."

Brock knows that a guy who is afraid to take a hit is not a natural for football, but the coach is pleased with his speed and because of his slender frame offers to use him only for long passes where he can score or sideline the ball without much danger of being tackled. And so Brock becomes an unlikely varsity football player for Crown Hill High School.

Although girls aren't exactly falling all over him as promised, Brock realizes that being on the team and giving Hunter a chance at racking up statistics has another virtue. He's safe from the nasty bullying that Hunter and his cabal exact on anyone they pick as a victim--especially Brock's first new friend at Crown Hill, Richie Fang. Richie is a natural target for Hunter--short, Chinese, brilliant at math, the violin, chess, and every other nerdy skill, but outgoing, always joking, and totally unwilling to kowtow to Hunter and his henchmen. On signs announcing Richie's awards, they change his last name from Fang to "Fag." And when Richie refuses to be intimidated, Hunter and his friends "can" Richie, forcing him into a garbage can and rolling it down the stairs.

Although Brock still fears Hunter, he remains friends with Richie, sharing worries about a seriously ill parent, playing online chess, and helping him prepare a project for national competition. And then before his sophomore year, Brock has an idea. Richie is a standout soccer player, and the football team has no decent kicker. Brock convinces Richie to try out, and with a little coaching, he becomes the team's kicking specialist. With Brock stronger and faster and Richie punting and point kicking, the Crown Hill team makes it to the playoff game against the mighty O'Dea High team. Late in the game with the score 35-35, Richie kicks a field goal that puts them ahead with only 20 seconds left. O'Dea fumbles the ball, and Crown Hill recovers and mounts a goal-line stand. With three seconds left Coach calls a time out.

"Okay!" he shouted. "Go into punt formation, but don't punt. Just let the clock run down, and then take a knee. Wait till you see zeroes, and then kneel."

00.02.

00.01

00.00

I heard the horn, and then I saw Richie throw the ball into the air and run to join the guys jumping crazily along the sidelines.

We'd won!

Only they hadn't. Not knowing the fine points of football, Richie had not taken a knee. And in football the game isn't over until the ball is downed. One of O'Dea's linemen in the end zone had caught the ball that Richie joyfully tossed high, in soccer style celebration, and O'Dea takes the win.

And Brock knows that Hunter Gates and the others are sure to take furious revenge on Richie, and soon.

There's no easy win for anyone in Carl Deuker's forthcoming Gutless (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), a coming-of-age story worked out on the playing fields and in the halls of a high school. Brock faces the ultimate gut check in a dramatic climax that few readers will see coming. Everything in this novel rings true: the setting is realistic, the characters are skillfully drawn and the plot develops naturally but relentlessly from the interplay of their personalities. Readers attracted to this novel in hopes of a hard-hitting sports saga will not be disappointed by the game play passages, but will be challenged by the unexpected ethical choices embedded in Deuker's premise.

As a more-than-sports novel with a serious life-changing theme, Gutless compares well with Kwame Christopher's 2015 Newbery-winning The Crossover, also published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Rafe Scores! Middle School: Just My Rotten Luck by James Patterson and Chris Tebbetts

Finding a dollar on the ground is special. But getting into a "special needs" program with "special" classes and no guarantee of getting through middle school anytime especially soon?

What did all of this mean, exactly? Was I just plain dumb? Could I have gotten out of it if I'd paid more attention in school? If I didn't have an imaginary friend who I used to talk to all the time?

If I wasn't so weird?

Rafe is back where he started, at Hill Valley Middle School, the scene of the crime, so to speak, where he succeeded in breaking all the official 100 School Rules and managed to get himself expelled and subsequently suspended at not one, but two, private art schools. Now, after a sentence from the Hills Valley School Board to a summer at a boot camp for troublesome kids which had him hanging from rocky crags and swimming icy rivers, Rafe is permitted to enroll again at Hill Valley Middle. And he soon discovers that his sixth-grade nemesis "Miller the Killer," who subjected him to daily "swirlie" shampoos in the boy's bathroom, is still there, two-times bigger and three times meaner, and promising to beat him up anytime he can catch him alone.

And it gets worse.

Rafe is now placed in a "special needs" class, held daily in the "fish bowl," a conference room with wide windows allowing anyone in the HVMS Library to observe the SPED kids in Mr. Fanucci's class. But Rafe makes his first real (i.e., visible) friend, Flip, an otherwise genial ADHD kid who is also a jock, quarterback of the HV flag football team. And when he leaves Miller the Killer in the dust in a chase through the middle schools' halls, the winded but impresssed Miller makes Rafe an offer he can't refuse--make the team as a fleet-footed wide receiver and Miller will refrain from takedowns for the year. Flip amiably agrees to get Rafe up to speed, so to speak, on football skills, and he discovers that if Miller the Killer and his fellow linemen can clear him a space through their opponents' defense, Rafe can SCORE!

With HVMS on a winning streak, Rafe suddenly finds that status as football hero not only earns him a place at the popular jocks' lunch table, but also gets him some surprising attention from cute girls--all but his crush, Jeanne Galleto, who seems always to be on concession bar duty when he speeds to one of his big touchdowns. Still, there's hope there, and Rafe seems to have broken his bad luck streak.

But for some reason his life seems to be missing something in the excitement department. He has a private talk with his imaginary muse, Leo the Silent.

"Don't do anything," Leo says.

In case you haven't noticed, you're not getting into trouble. You're not breaking any rules--or even trying.  You're just playing football, drawing your comics, hanging out, and going to school. That's called normal, dude. Relax."

But then Rafe comes up with a way to follow his mentor Mrs. Donatello's advice to use his art talents to "make a difference." He creates a secret identity, S.A.M. (Sam the Art Man) and starts early morning postings around the school of parodies of art classics which satirize the school bullies. Rafe's clever cartooning skills soon become a local media sensation. Rafe feels like he's doing clandestine community service, but when his cover is blown, he discovers he's been breaking an obscure privacy law, and, just his luck, he's in back in Principal Striker's office hot seat again, in James Patterson's and Chris Tebbetts' latest in their best-selling series, Middle School series, Middle School: Just My Rotten Luck(Little, Brown and Company, 2015). Patterson and Tebbetts' formula for drop-dead-funny middle school stories is still scoring with reviewers and readers, and with an older-and-wiser, semi-successful Rafe, this one is truly up to speed with their other best-selling titles in the laughs department.

Read reviews of the whole series here.

Compromised: Santa; by Nicola Mar

"I'm so--so sorry, June. I shouldn't have left you," Alice cries. She is hugging me and I push her away.

Only a few bruises have become visible. "How could they do this, June?" Alice cries with me. But these are not questions that can be answered.

"You must tell the police," she demands. "I can't let you ignore this."

"No, Alice, promise me you won't do anything," I beg. "Please. If this gets out, I might as well kill myself. My life will be over."

She shakes her head. "Why would you want to let them get away with this? How many other girls do you think there have been? They will do this again if you don't say something."

I know she's right, but the only person I can think about is Mama.

June knows she is lucky to have a popular friend like Alice. Overweight, shy, and virtually invisible in her high school, June agrees to sneak out for a late-night party with Alice.

At first it is fun. A couple of drinks and some banter with the crowd in the kitchen make her feel less self-conscious, one of the group. But as the alcohol takes effect, June begins to feel nauseated and disoriented. She looks around for Alice, but someone tells her she's left, and she suddenly feels terribly alone.

Feeling she's going to throw up, June frantically looks for a bathroom in the strange house, and finding it, she rushes inside. The toilet is almost overflowing, and June leans against the wall and sinks to the floor. The next thing she remembers is being sexually assaulted by some of the football players, boys she scarcely knows.

When she comes to, her face in the filthy floor, June only thinks of escape. She stumbles out of the house and walks home, managing to get into her house without waking her mother . But the worst is yet to come. One of the boys has taken photographs of her lying unconscious on the bathroom floor and begins to post them on the internet. Soon quiet, studious June finds herself a pariah, beginning a downward spiral which leads to attempts at suicide.

It is a old, familiar story, one as old as mankind, yet repeated with each new generation, and in her novel Santa; author Nicola Mar spares none of the wrenching details of this experience nor its aftermath, the shame and depression that lead June to two suicide attempts. The author's narration of June's attack and the desperate days afterward is strong, honest, and affecting, although many readers will be disappointed in her contrived, deus ex machina conclusion, filled with dream sequences populated by bright lights, an angel named Santa, and... yes, a rainbow. Still, forewarned is forearmed, and Mar's novel may well serve as a cautionary tale for young adult readers--beware, and be there for each other.

A portion of the proceeds of this book are directed to Mar's organization, Project Semicolon.

"I know your secret...:" Cold Calls by Charles Benoit

The phone rang and he answered it.

No number came up on caller ID. There was a pause on the other end and then two quick clicks, and then a voice, computer generated and pitched low.

"Eric Hamilton."

Then a single whispered sentence that made his stomach drop.

Then nothing.

Eric has a secret, and someone, someone who knows how to make a call which leaves no traces, someone who has hacked his computer and found the picture of April that he should not have taken, the one no one should see, that someone clearly knows his secret.

Another call comes soon, demanding he play a silly prank--dumping school cafeteria mac and cheese on a freshman guy he doesn't even know--a prank that Eric knows will get him benched, suspended, and in major trouble at home. Still Eric knows he has to do it. April doesn't deserve the alternative.

Part of Eric's school suspension requires him to spend three days in system-wide anti-bullying classes. No one seems particularly engaged in the class, not even the teacher, until Eric overhears her and her assistant laughing about their students' explanatory essays they are collating:

..."claimed it was his twin brother, who, by the way, is two years older...."

..."said she didn't remember it, so it didn't count anymore..."

..."said a strange voice called her at night--"

Eric's head snapped up. Eyes wide, he held his breath, but Ms. Owens had moved on to other unbelievable excuses.

That's when he noticed the goth girl staring at him.

She nodded once--slowly--then flipped a page and went back to writing..

Goth girl, Shelly, finds him after class, and tells him they have something in common.

"It's about your secret," she says. "We need to talk."

Shelley saw Eric's reaction to what he heard, and Fatima's as well, and she has a theory that they all had the same mystery caller, one who had discovered they each had secrets that they would do almost anything to hide. When Eric and Shelley meet with Fatima, she suddenly intuits that they themselves are not the real objects of the prank: they are just the means to humiliate three strangers, three people that are the real objects of the perpetrator's revenge. Fatima offers to hack into the social media accounts of their three victims to trace their relationships back in time to discover the one person they have in common, the one victim the three must have all tormented together. The irony of the whole thing is not lost on them.

"This whole thing is crazy," Fatima said. "The people we bullied bullied the girl who's bullying us."

"So, in the end, we're all victims," Eric said.

"Yeah," Shelly said. "And we're all bullies."

But Eric, Shelly, and Fatima receive another call, asking them to carry out new orders or their secrets will be published immediately on the deadline. As time runs short, they finally identify the source of the calls, but still must find a way to purge the evidence from the extortionist's computer before she executes her threat.

In his latest, Cold Calls (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), author Charles Benoit brings together three unlikely co-conspirators in a page-turning tale in which no one is totally innocent--except those who will be hurt by the revelation of the hidden secrets. The serious theme of the long chain of school bullying is worked out amid a tangle of realistic teen relations, misunderstandings, and bad choices, as the three unlikely victims come together in a narrative that is suspenseful right down to the final, but intriguingly not concluding, page.

Other thriller-adventures by Charles Benoit include Fall from Grace and Relative Danger.