Class Election

July 1, 2016
Middle school hustler Max Corrigan ups his game to manage a hard-fought campaign for class president.Being ever the man with a plan, Max adroitly pushes the never-named New Kid into the race. What does a winning campaign need? First, an issue...so how about promising to get the schoolwide ban on chewing gum lifted! Next on the agenda: line up a talented staff, hot teacher endorsements, and media attention for the "pro-gum candidate." Offering fiendishly plausible pointers on such skills as fake-reading an assigned book and impersonating callers on the phone, Max lays out a strategy that can't miss--unless, that is, a rival "one-percenter" candidate with a clever manager of his own steals the vote with glittering promises and showers of expensive swag. Using second-person narration addressed at the New Kid, Swaab tells the tale between the lines of Max's glib patter and frantic reactions to being outmaneuvered; cartoon line drawings on nearly every page convey side comments and punch lines. Max looks white, but names and, in the pictures, hair styles and facial features hint at some diversity in the cast. Readers who identify with the never-seen New Kid can pat themselves on the back as "you" repeatedly come through in the clutch. Even readers with no political aspirations can pick up several useful cons. (Fiction. 10-12)

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2016

Gr 4-6-Max Corrigan is back. This time he's orchestrating a class election for the New Kid. Max provides a list of doublespeak words and phrases sure to dupe adults, a microtrade strategy for winning friends and influencing people, and advice on how to get through English class without ever reading a book. With campaign strategies such as "How To Be the Most Interesting Person in School (Even if You're Duller Than a Dentist's Waiting Room)" and "How To Suck Up to Your Teachers Without Looking Like a Total Brown-Noser," how can the New Kid lose? A tangle of favors and bribes complicate the campaign against a rich-kid opponent, and, of course, Max is the last to see the problem. Max's direct address to the New Kid, while engaging, will confuse readers unfamiliar with the first book, especially since the New Kid doesn't show his face outside the boys' bathroom. If they stick with the book, middle schoolers will likely enjoy the true-to-life melodrama. Hopefully readers will see behind the snarkiness of Max's pronouncements to the deeper truth, though the sometimes bawdy, in-your-face humor may stand in the way of that insight. VERDICT Recommended for reluctant readers and fans of graphic novels and hybrid books.-Katherine Koenig, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.