Schooled
By Jamie Sumner
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Eleven-year-old Lenny Syms is about
to start college—sort of. As part of a brand-new experimental school, Lenny and
four other students are starting sixth grade on a university campus, where
they’ll be taught by the most brilliant professors and given every resource
imaginable. This new school is pretty weird, though. Instead of hunkering down
behind a desk to study math, science, and history, Lenny finds himself
meditating, participating in discussions where you don’t even have to raise
your hand, and spying on the campus population in the name of anthropology.
But Lenny just lost his mom, and his Latin professor dad is better with dead
languages than actual human beings. Lenny doesn’t want to be part of some
learning experiment. He just wants to be left alone. Yet if Lenny is going to
make it as a middle schooler on a college campus, he’s going to need help. Is a
group of misfit sixth graders and one particularly quirky professor enough to
pull him out of his sadness and back into the world?
As a teacher, I love the premise of
a sort of experimental middle school on a college campus. It’s an interesting
idea! For Lenny, though, it’s not at all what he wants. He’s dealing with some pretty
big grief from his mother’s death, and his father’s distance. It doesn’t help
that many of the professors on campus remember his mother—it’s where she and
his father went to school.
Mention of the “f-word”. One character
is kind of new-agey, burning sage, talking about crystals, etc. Mention of a
very religious family that doesn’t allow their child to read Harry Potter. Mention
of witches and beheading (in the context of fairy tales). Death of a parent and
spouse (before the story starts). Two middle schoolers hold hands. Skipping
school.
This is a fun story with many
different types of kids. Anyone who is interested in an unconventional school.
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