Apple Paperback Review: Report to the Principal's Office (School Daze #1) by Jerry Spinelli

On select Sundays I will be reviewing some of the old Apple Paperback titles from my childhood. These titles were published, or republished by Scholastic during the 1980s & 1990s and were written and set in the United States. In Australia, these books were typically only available from libraries or could be ordered through catalogues that were distributed through primary schools. Most of these titles are now long out of print or have been updated and republished for later generations ...

School Daze was a four book series set in the newly built and established Plumfield Middle School. It centred around four very different kids from the sixth grade (two boys and two girls) and their quirky new principal Mr T. Charles Brimlow. I still have my original copy--the one that my parents bought me for my eleventh birthday. I'm pretty sure that at one stage I had the full set, but I have no idea what happened to the other three books. In fact, I can't even really remember the other three books at all, but for the fact that one of them featured a giant skateboard.

Anyway, Report to the Principal's Office is a quirky story that introduces the four main characters and sets the scene for the rest of the series. There is Sunny, who is, ironically a grouch, and who is currently refusing to shower until she gets transferred to the neighbouring middle school so that she can be with her best friend. Next is the Eddie, a shy, nerdy kid who falls prey to a bunch of bullies and who isn't sure that he can cope with the pressures of middle school. Third is Salem, a boorish aspiring writer who tries to turn everything in to a special occasion. And finally, there is Pickles, a quirky 'cool' kid who rides a green skateboard and who likes inventing things. Anyway, the kids meet after they are all invited to have lunch with the principal, who wants to have a meeting with a few kids from each grade, the ones that he considers to be special and interesting. 

Through some quirky adventures during the first couple of weeks, the kids find their place at the school and bond after a surprising adventure involving the school mascot. 

This one was a lot of fun to re-read.

The School Daze series has twice been reissued and republished by Scholastic--in 1999 and 2008 and is currently out of print.
About the author: Jerry Spinelli was the author of a number of children's books, some of them published by Apple Paperbacks. His novels include the award winning book for children, Maniac Magee.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more