Work In Progress: Middle School--Get Me Out of Here! by James Patterson

MOM THROWS A CURVEBALL

The next morning Mom made really good French toast for breakfast. With bananas and maple syrup. and extra cinnamon on mine.

"Rafe, when you're done, I want you to put on the shirt I left out for you," Mom said. "And clean pants, please."

That stopped me with a mouthful of everything. Nothing good ever happens in clothes your mom picks out for you.

As far as Rafe Khatchadorian is concerned life has already thrown him a sinker. Just as he thought he was at least on first base with a scholarship seventh grade year at Airbrook Art Academy, a grease-fire-cum-conflagration at Swifty's Diner puts the kabosh on mom's waitress job, and the whole family is forced to move in with Grandma Dotty, who is (a bit dotty, that is) in the city, facing seventh grade in an inner-city middle school.

But Rafe's former teacher Mrs. Donatello (nee Dragon Lady) comes through again and wangles him a slot at Cathedral School of the Arts. Tuition is free, and so, thinks Rafe, is he--free of those state-of-the-art middle school bullies back home.

But Rafe reckons without regard to real life. Mean kids, he discovers, are part of the package even in art school, and when his first project, a self-portrait, is up for a crit, (critique) by the whole class, Rafe is subject to a brutal dinking, led by the resident well-heeled popular kid Zeke McDonald with his henchman Kenny Patel, sending Rafe into a self-esteem tailspin and permanent lunch periods in a stall in the boys' bathroom.

"To be honest, Mr. Beekman," says Kenny, "I don't think Rafe's portrait tells us very much, except what he looks like." Kenny turned around and looked back at me like there was a pile of doggy droppings on the chair. "Well... maybe not even that," he said, and a bunch of people laughed.

But in his new power lunch place, Rafe is discovered by another of Zeke's victims, Matty the Freak, and the two decide to bond in a bit of sweet revenge, bombing Zeke and Kenny with water-filled rubber gloves from the roof as the two meanies eat lunch on the outside steps. A friend and fellow conspirator is good, but soon the impulsive Rafe is drawn into a series of hilarious but art-career-threatening misadventures with Matty. Advised by his teacher that good art grows out of the artist's life, Rafe comes up with another grand Plan, his OPERATION GET A LIFE! Some of his self-imposed tasks are innocuous, such as walking backward around the block; some of them, dumpster-diving with Matty, result in cool found objects for his Scrap Sculpture project; one, a surveillance project to discover more about his missing father from the mysterious Hairy the barber, uncovers a family link, but as Matty the Freak continues to up the ante on the Operation, things get more than a little hairy for our hero. In-school suspension follows the kidnap-Zeke-and Kenny's-Scrap-Project Caper, and then Zeke exacts total cyber revenge when time for the crit for their digital arts project rolls around.

"Okay, Rafe, let's see what you have for us," Mr. Crawley said. "What's the name of your project?"

"Kid in Wall," I said. (What can I say. Titles just aren't my thing.)

Mr. Crawley punched a couple of keys. But instead of Kid in A Wall...

The whole computer lab went totally quiet. Nobody laughed. I don't even think anybody breathed.

After that, I couldn't tell you, because I'd already walked out of the room.

Totally humiliated by the revelation of his anxiety about his missing father in a swiped drawing captioned "I don't think he's coming back," Rafe takes flight, heading for his former hometown, Hills Valley, on a smelly bus, with vague plans to begin a hermit's life in the family's rented storage locker, a total loser at art and life.

In this non-stop sequel to their best-selling Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life, authors James Patterson's and Chris Tebbett's latest middle-school saga, Middle School: Get Me out of Here! (Little, Brown, 2012) ranges between the heights of hilarity and the pits of pathos as his hero Rafe Khachadorian careens through yet another middle school year. Illustrated by the talented and sensitive Laura Parks' comic cartoon drawings of Rafe's escapades in near graphic-novel style, this latest book is one all middle schoolers (and former middle schoolers of all ages) will find a really fine read, a humorous but fine-tuned story that tickles the funny bone and touches the heart.

Rafe on the Rocks! Save Rafe: (Middle School #5) by James Patterson

"You heard me!" Mom shouted on the other side of that door.

"YOU'RE GOING BACK TO HILLS VILLAGE MIDDLE SCHOOL!!!!"

Having gotten himself expelled from Hills Village Middle and similarly ejected from two private art schools, Rafe Khatchadorian finds himself on the educational rocks in more ways than one. His mother has no recourse but to try to re-enroll him at Hills Village.

"You're a PUBLIC SCHOOL! You HAVE to take him!" Mom pleads, but the administrators at HVMS are as hard-nosed as their names imply. Mrs. Stricker and Mrs. Stonecase offer Rafe only one chance to re-matriculate without repeating last year's work--successfully completing The Program ("a highly effective intensive program for behaviorally challenged children") (as in boot camp). Rafe knows he can't let his long-suffering mom down yet again.

But when he arrives at what is euphemistically called Base Camp and sees the rest of the motley crew of campers, he figures he may be the only kid there who is not a crazy, a delinquent, or a major loser. Okay, he has to admit, so far, he probably is all three. His leader, Sargeant Fish, is unhappy with the sorry performance of his charges in setting up camp, and nobody eats that night. And they have to survive seven more days of this torture!

"GOOD MORN-ING, COCKROACHES.

"Time to mow down another challenge," Sarge Fish said. "Move, move, move, move, moooooove!"

The next morning Rafe discovers something about himself--he's acrophobic! He freezes on the way up the climbing tower obstacle, where, by the way, the only lunch option is waiting, and barely makes it to the top, failing to win one of the twenty tokens he must have to pass the course. Even the other losers laugh at him.

After cutting trees and constructing a raft to float down the river, Rafe's team is up, well, down the creek without their paddles, which they lose while spinning dizzily out of control in the rapids. Wet and cold, the failed crew get only a chewing out from their leaders, who tell them to suck it up and head up the nearby mountain. "Move! Move! MOOOOVE!!

To make it worse, Rafe is partnered with Carmen, a tattooed tough chick who punches his arm unless he does all her work as well as his own. Rafe has to get those tokens: failure means washing out and ensuring that he will spend a minimum of four years in middle school. So he does her bidding, trying to stay out of range of her right fist as much as possible while he does her half of the chores. Still, climbing the Devil's Highway cliff, with the nineteenth token at stake, Rafe forgets not to look down and freezes in fear. And there's no help in sight except for Charmin' Carmen, gleefully grabbing for his best handholds.

"Don't be a wuss!" Carmen said. And then she pinched me.

"STOP IT!" I yelled at her.

"Make me," she said And this time her pinch felt more like a piranha taking a bite out of my side.

It was Ticking. Me. Off!

But this time Carmen has the right moves to save Rafe.

Down to the last token to go, Rafe hangs on, his only refuge his drawing notebook. But when the teams are required to collect firewood and build a fire with flint and steel in the pouring rain, Carmen points out that the only way they'll ever get their soggy kindling to burn is by using Rafe's precious notebook as tinder. Saving a few of his Leo and the Loozer pages, Rafe hands his book over to start the fire and win the twentieth token--his ticket home.

It's tough love like Rafe has never seen, as he begins to wonder why he ever screwed up his cushy previous life--a warm, dry house with a refrigerator and his mom to deal with all the problems, in James Patterson's latest in his hilarious Middle School series, Middle School: Save Rafe! (Little, Brown, 2014). After The Program, Hills Village Middle is going to be a piece of cake, Rafe figures.

Well, maybe. Patterson's other books in his best-selling picaresque hero series are Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life, Middle School: Get Me out of Here!, Middle School: My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar, and Middle School: How I Survived Bullies, Broccoli, and Snake Hill. (see reviews here).

Georgia Rocks! Middle School: My Brother Is A Big Fat Liar by James Patterson and Lisa Papademotriou

"IT'S SO GREAT THAT YOU AREN'T AFRAID TO HAVE GREEN HAIR," Rhonda gushed. "YOU AND I ARE A LOT ALIKE--WE'RE NOT AFRAID TO BE DIFFERENT, RIGHT, GEORGIA?"

Rhonda was talking at an even higher volume than usual, and a few people stared as we made our way down the hall.< "I'm not trying to be different," I snapped.

"YOU'RE JUST BEING YOURSELF!" Rhonda crowed. "WE ARE WHO WE ARE!"

"Rhonda! We're not alike, okay? So can you please just stop following me around?"

Rhonda froze up. Her eyes filled with tears.

It's not like Georgia has great expectations for her first day at Hills Valley Middle School. After all, her brother Rafe had practically brought the school down in his year there, attempting to break every rule in the book. And then, there's no way she can slip in under the radar with a last name like Khatchadorian. And in a payback prank, Rafe slips some green dye into her shampoo and she has to face the first day of school with green hair.

Rafe may have gone off to Airbrook Arts School, but his name is still anathema at HVMS. Every table in the cafeteria seems to be a Khatchadorian-free zone, and Missy Trillin, pop princess queen-bee and her interchangeable followers Brittany and Bethany zero in on her as their chosen victim-of-the-month, ridiculing her clothes, her limp, and of course her hair. Teachers turn into trolls when they see her name on the roll, and the only friendly face she finds is Rhonda, a super-sized middle-school loser straight from central casting who latches onto her like a barnacle onto a barge.

At least Georgia has her friends from Airbrook, Nanci, Patti, and Mari, and their as-yet-unnamed rock band. Sure. she is just learning her first three chords, but Georgia has high hopes. That is, until she discovers that Rafe has malevolently signed them up for the upcoming Battle of the Bands at the HVMS dance, presided over by (who else?) Dance Committee Chairperson, Missy Trillin. "We STINK!" Georgia moans, but Rhonda, who has tagged along for rehearsal, thinks We Stink is a killer name for the group. She even offers her services as band singer. She won't need a microphone, Georgia admits, with dread.

James Patterson's latest in his best-selling Middle School series, Middle School: My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar (Little, Brown, 2013), has all the elements in place for a middle-school serio-comic trauma tale.  Giving the distaff side a chance in her very own book, Georgia is an appealing narrator as she deals with the world's most annoying big brother and the travail of the school scene, struggling to keep her A+ super student status with all the cards stacked against her. Although most readers will suspect how this one will turn out, it's fun getting to that delicious denouement when Missy gets her just desserts (rice pudding and all) and a literal putdown as We Stink rocks and rolls right over her. Patterson throws the readers an interesting curve with his introduction of Georgia's sudden realization that she is adopted, and that Rafe is, after all, NOT her brother. Or IS he? Although this serious side note introduces a new element into this sibling story, it is well foreshadowed and adds a bit of depth to the warring sibling theme.

Patterson's earlier books in this series, all illustrated in pseudo-Rafe drawings by Neil Swaab, are Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life and Middle School: Get Me out of Here!

And wait! There's More! Summer vacation is coming and it seems those opposing siblings Rafe and Georgia are off to Camp Wannamorra, with remediation for Rafe and enrichment for Georgia and all the usual suspects of summer camp just waiting for them in the forthcoming-in-June Middle School: How I Survived Bullies, Broccoli, and Snake Hill.

Back to School: Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life by James Patterson

Okay, so imagine the day your great-great-grandmother was born. Got it? Now go back a hundred years or so. And then another hundred. That's about when they built Hills Village Middle School.

Of course, I think it was a prison for Pilgrims back then, but not too much has changed.

Now it's a prison for sixth, seventh, and eighth graders.

For Raphael (a.k.a. Rafe) Khatchadorian, his unpronounceable, unspellable name is the least of his worries. Unlike the Wimpy Kid, who at least has Rowdy, Rafe doesn't have a best friend, unless you count Leo the Silent, who mostly draws instead of talking to him. His sister is a fourth-grade snoop who is only on his side when it comes to his mother's loutish and lazy fiance, who rouses himself from the couch only to issue orders to Rafe or raid the fridge. His mom Jules is great, but she's working two shifts at the diner since her boyfriend Bear moved in just to keep the family afloat, leaving Rafe mostly under Bear's thumb.

And as Rafe stumbles into his homeroom and tries to take his first seat for the first day of middle school, he runs afoul of the class bully, Miller the Killer:

"You're in my seat," said Miller.

"I don't see your name on it," I told him, and I was just starting to think maybe that was the worst thing to say, when Miller put out one his XXXL paws around my neck and starting lifting me like a 100-pound dumbbell. "Let's try that again," he said. "This is my seat. Understand?"

"SIT DOWN, NOW!" bellowed Mr. Rourke.

Since nobody else was stupid enough to sit right in front of Miller, that was the only seat left.

And because I'm the world's biggest idiot, I didn't look back when I went to sit in my chair. That's why I hit the dirt as I went down--all the way down--to the floor.

The good news? Given the way things had started off, I figured middle school could only get better from here.

The bad news? I was wrong about the good news.

The usual middle school stock characters are in attendance here--Dragon Lady Donatello for English, Principal Dwight with his 93 pages of school rules, Coach Lattimore, an apparent undergrad sadism major, the hair-netted lunchroom ladies with endless supplies of toxic meatloaf, and, to break the monotony of pain and boredom, the pretty and popular Jeanne Galleta, who occasionally gives our hero a smile.

But Leo the Silent has a plan: as Principal Dwight drones on at assembly, plowing through the HVMS Code of Conduct, Leo sketches out a way to make the misery fun--a challenge even. Can Rafe break every school rule and rack up a million points before the school year ends? Rafe hesitates, but then takes the Operation R.A.F.E. challenge. His first mission: set off the fire alarm in the middle of the reading of the rules. Rafe wheedles his way to a bathroom pass, doing his best whiny potential pants-wetter voice, and races to the nearest fire alarm box. Chaos! Success! 50,000 points already. And it's only the first day!

And the game is on. Rafe progresses from simple chewing-gum-in-class infractions, finally earning major points with a three-day suspension for burning his first failing report card. His sixth-grade year is going splendidly, game-wise, that is. And then his pranks hit the wall. He breaks his own rule, No One Gets Hurt, and inadvertently gets Jeanne sent to detention too.

Then disaster strikes. Miller the Killer seizes his notebook with the Operation R.A.F.E. scoring system and Leo's cartoons, and threatens to blow his cover unless Rafe pays him an ever-increasing price scale for each page. Rafe is forced to purloin soft drinks from Bear's hidden cache in the basement and set up a contraband trade out of his locker to make the payments. The game spins out of control, and Rafe becomes more and more desperate.

And then it gets worse! Jeanne points out that the consequences for Operation R.A.F.E. and the ensuing failing grades are going to qualify him for the booby prize--summer school--or even worse--repeating the whole sixth grade fiasco again next year! Help!

James Patterson's just published Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life (Little, Brown, 2011) uses the same devices--first person narration and kid-style cartoon illustration--as Jeff Kinney's Wimpy Kid series, and gives us the story of a kid with two strikes against him who nevertheless takes a futile swing at the one that is high and outside. But despite Rafe's eleven-year-old take on his first year at middle school, there are some adults who know how to offer him what he needs to break the loser mold. Dragon Lady Donatello is actually on his side, and working with his mother, who finally boots the Bear, finds a way for Rafe to get another chance at hitting it out of the park.

This is a highly-readable, very funny best seller which nonetheless slips in a lot of insight into the middle school mind. Middle readers can always do with a bit of self-understanding, and Patterson's and co-author Chris Tebbetts' dose of this rare quality goes down easy here, coupled as it is with Laura Park's cartoon illustrations which mix sixth-grade reality and fantasy well. As Susan Carpenter, reviewer for The Los Angeles Times, puts it,"Middle School" does a wonderful job of channeling the anxiety, and (il)logic, of the middle-grade mind. "Middle School" is a perfectly pitched novel exploring an important and under-covered topic: the unhealthy ways in which disempowered kids express themselves to obtain some sort of control over situations in which they find themselves helpless."

Pairing up: The Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel by Jeff Kinney



We’re starting a ballroom dancing unit in Phys Ed, and Mrs. Moretta said each of us needed to find a partner.

To be honest with you, I don’t really care who I get paired up with as long as it isn’t Ruby Bird.

As far as I know, Ruby is the only girl who has ever been suspended from our school, and that was for biting a teacher. In fact, the reason Ruby has only one front tooth is because the other one ended up in Mr. Underwood’s elbow. I know if she’s my dance partner, I’ll do SOMETHING to make her mad and end up with her other tooth in MY arm.

But there are a lot more boys in my class this year than girls, so it made sense that not everyone got a partner. But Mrs. Moretta said that EVERYONE had to dance and she started pairing us boys up with ONE ANOTHER. The next thing I knew I was dancing the waltz with Carlos Escalera.

Today Phys Ed was canceled because we had a general assembly during fourth period. I have to admit I was a little disappointed, because believe it or not, me and Carlos have actually been getting the hang of the meringue'.

And Greg is going to need those cool moves. The subject of that assembly is the seventh-grade Valentine’s Dance, and it’s suddenly a serious mission to ask a girl to the dance. Greg scrambles for a socially acceptable date (i.e., one that isn’t Ruby Bird or Carlos) without, like, actually asking a girl in person. He decides he needs a minion, a wing man, as he puts it, to do the actual asking, and taps his sidekick Rowly for the job. But when Rowly strikes out as Minister of Romance, Greg fears he’s going to be one of those left-out lonely guys.

But then a surprise epidemic of chicken pox (who ever gets those anymore?) sweeps the seventh grade and some girls are left dateless. It’s game on for girlfriends all over again, and when Abigail Brown agrees to go with Greg and Rowly as “a group of friends,” the dance looks like a sure thing. With a new, hand-me-down suit from big brother Rodrick, his stash of cash to pay for dinner out, and Rowly’s dad down as designated limo driver for the evening, it’s a date!

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, everything (except the last dance) does, in Jeff Kinney’s latest installment in his best-selling series, The Third Wheel (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 7) (Abrams Books, 2012). It’s another wry walk through the Wonder Years with the world’s most famous wimpy kid! As Publishers Weekly puts it, ”Seven books into the bestselling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Kinney isn't messing with a good thing, and he continues to mine middle-school life for comedic gold.”

And if readers just can’t get too much middle-school mirth, (and from their sales, that’s not happening) there’s always Greg’s literary cousin, Lincoln Pierce’s latest top-selling Big Nate Makes the Grade (Big Nate Comic Compilations) (Andrews McMeel, 2012) or James Patterson’s latest Middle School: Get Me out of Here! (Little, Brown, 2012) (See my review here.)