#108: Don't Give Up, Mallory!
This book has three major things going on:
Buddy Barrett is pissed that only kids in organized groups (like the Brownies or Boy Scouts) can march in Stoneybrook’s Memorial Day Parade, so he makes up a Buddy Barrett Marching Band so he can join the parade. Then the baby-sitters have to scramble to make this marching band a reality, which includes helping the kids make instruments out of toilet paper rolls and Kleenex boxes with Kazoos stuffed inside, and teaching them marching band choreography. Just reading about this gave me a migraine.
Mallory is sixth-grade class secretary and is helping with the sixth-grade “FUN-raiser” to leave behind a gift for SMS. She is the ringleader of the fundraising week and helps put together five different booths that end up being very lucrative. After she and her fellow class officers confront the administration about misappropriated funds from five years ago that were supposed to create a library lounge, Mal’s group’s money is combined with the old money to do just that. Oh, and they break the SMS fundraising record… natch.
Mallory’s new Short Takes class is Children’s Literature, which she should be an ace at, right? She even has a hot young teacher, Mr. Cobb, who’s one of those “I’m-not-like-a-regular-teacher-I’m-a-cool-teacher,” which usually means bad teacher. Mr. Cobb is cool in some ways, like eliminating a lot of papers and tests so the class can spend a lot of time discussing and analyzing the literature, but he’s a jagweed in other ways, like grading mostly on participation but then heavily favoring the boys in discussions (giving them more time to speak, letting them speak out of turn while the girls sit patiently and quietly with hands raised, etc.). Mallory gets super frustrated and loses her confidence and hates the class, which sucks because it’s literally about her #1 passion. She finally confronts her teacher, who is defensive but then during the next class clearly realizes that she’s right, because he gives a public apology to the whole class and begins to monitor himself so he can do better. (This must be children’s literature, an adult man has just apologized!!!) And that’s how Mal got her groove back.
