None
3 stars
A school story, but Harry Potter it isn't.
It's about a kid with an Armenian-sounding name who fights with his stepfather to be, and sets out to break every rule in his new school.
The book is copiously illustrated with drawings, many of which seem to make little sense, and are mystifying rather than explanatory of the text.
I found the plot rather unconvincing, too. I can't imagine any kid going to a new school with the ambition to break every rule in the school. When I was that age, we broke rules, and we engaged in disruptive behaviour occasionally, on a couple of occasions we went on strike, the whole school. One of those occasions was about an authoritarian teacher. But the strike was organised by the oldest kids the in the school, kin the highest class (in that case, Grade 7), not by newly arrived youngsters in the …
A school story, but Harry Potter it isn't.
It's about a kid with an Armenian-sounding name who fights with his stepfather to be, and sets out to break every rule in his new school.
The book is copiously illustrated with drawings, many of which seem to make little sense, and are mystifying rather than explanatory of the text.
I found the plot rather unconvincing, too. I can't imagine any kid going to a new school with the ambition to break every rule in the school. When I was that age, we broke rules, and we engaged in disruptive behaviour occasionally, on a couple of occasions we went on strike, the whole school. One of those occasions was about an authoritarian teacher. But the strike was organised by the oldest kids the in the school, kin the highest class (in that case, Grade 7), not by newly arrived youngsters in the lowest class in the school.
When I was 11 going on 12 I went to a new school, and I mean new. It opened at the beginning of the year, and everyone was new, the pupils the teachers, the buildings, the lot. And on the first day the headmaster told us, "There are no rules. You, by your behaviour, will make the rules."
And so I found both the plot and the main characters rather unconvincing. I've never met real kids who behaved like that, or wanted to. Harry Potter, though set in a fantasy school in a fantasy environment, was actually far more true-to-life.