Joe and Ravi might be from very different places, but they’re both stuck in the same place: SCHOOL. Joe’s lived in the same town all his life, and was doing just fine until his best friends moved away and left him on his own. Ravi’s family just moved to America from India, and he’s finding it pretty hard to figure out where he fits in. Joe and Ravi don’t think they have anything in common — but soon enough they have a common enemy (the biggest bully in their class) and a common mission: to take control of their lives over the course of a single crazy week.
Sarah Weeks is an American writer of children’s books, perhaps best known for the novel So B. It which has won several juvenile literature awards. In 2007 it won the Rebecca Caudill Young Reader’s Book Award and William Allen White Children’s Book Award. “The best thing about being an author is that I get to spend all day doing what I like best – writing. From the time I was a little girl, the two things I enjoyed most were playing music and writing. I studied music composition in college and was a singer songwriter before I became an author. I don’t write much music anymore, I’m too busy writing books!”
Gita Varadarajan was born and raised in India, where she grew up with her grandparents. She describes her grandfather as a master storyteller who would entertain her, her brothers, and her cousins with fantastical stories. “I started to see the world through stories,” she explains. “I saw a lot of stories around me, and I created a lot of stories in my head.” As a teacher, she has taught and designed curriculums all over the world, including in a number of schools in Bangalore. In 2010, she, her husband, and her two sons moved to the United States, where she earned her master’s degree in literacy education from Teachers College at Columbia University. Shortly after, she was delighted to begin teaching second grade in Princeton, New Jersey, and through other programs promoting diversity, like the Princeton University Prison Teaching Initiative.
Read Aloud Tips
-
Begin this book by first having the students make predictions about what this could be about after reading the synopsis.
-
Use this book to initiate discussion about helplessness and vulnerabilities.
-
Pause throughout reading and ask open-ended questions.
- “What do you think will happen next?”
- “Why do you think the character did that?”
- “Has anything like that ever happened to you?”
A novel treatment of a familiar situation delivered with fizz and aplomb. – Kirkus Reviews