Paperback edition has a winning cover design!

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	• All of the Above Shelley Pearsall Little, Brown Young Readers, 2008 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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Memorable characters and a great read

Even if you don't go to an urban school (or didn't as a kid), you can connect to this story that starts with a lame math class and a pretty lame math teacher. The math teacher gets desperate and comes up with this idea about breaking a world record for making four-sided triangle thingies (tetrahedrons). Needless to say, his students don't leap all over that idea, but somehow James, Rhondell, Marcel, and Sharice end up doing it. Pretty soon you will be all caught up in the lives of these four characters and the people around them. Because each character "talks" in first person, you see different points of view on what's going on with the project--can they do it? Is it a dumb idea? What's the point? Is it really helping anyone learn math (or anything else)? What happens if they do it? I never got the four characters mixed up (like you do in some books) and the author made them seem so real that you just want to hug Sharice and get Marcel to talk and... If you are a clever reader, you'll see that the story itself is kind of a tetrahedron--four characters, four sides... Anyway, it's a great book--check it out!! P.S. Another cool part of the book is how it includes the drawings that James doodles...

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Plus the recipes sound delish

You know what author Shelley Pearsall's got? Flexibility, baby. Loads of it. Let's say, for example, that you write a rip-roaringly good bit of harrowing historical fiction (as she did with "Crooked River"). Now you'd like to follow that up with another book for kids. Do you follow the straight and narrow path of always writing with an eye on the past? Or do you get inspired by a group of students at the Alexander Hamilton School in Cleveland, Ohio? Pearsall opted for the latter, and the result is the surprisingly good, All of the Above. Now I avoided this book like crazy for a while. Why? The crummy cover. But open that same cover up and you find a story that never loses hope but that also never treads into the world of mindless optimism. There's a gritty reality hiding at the core of this book. The surprise is that it's a pleasure to discover it for yourself.

Seventh grade math teacher Mr. Collins is the first person to explain to you how, "the tetrahedron project began with one of my worst classes in twenty years of teaching". In that class you have some pretty odd kids. There's James Harris III who basically comes across as future jail fodder more than anything else. There's also Sharice who does well in school but has trouble at home. Rhondell works hard but she's so timid and stuck in her own little shell that it's hard to get her to do anything besides cower. And then of course there's local celebrity Marcel, who's father owns the best known barbecue joint around. What do these kids all have in common? Well, they're in the math club. Not just any math club, though. Mr. Collins has this crazy plan. You see, a California school once built a "Stage 6" tetrahedron and got into the Guinness Book of World Records. Collins thinks this group can do better. But when personal problems and a devastating bit of vandalism bring the project screeching to a halt, it's up to the kids, not Collins, to come up with a new plan. Told in ever changing first person narrratives, Pearsall weaves together the story's fight and ultimate success.

What did I appreciate about this book? Well, the description makes it kind of sound like a "Stand and Deliver" type story with a healthy helping of "Dangerous Minds" to boot. In essence, the old plotline where a white teacher comes to town and gets the inner city kids to believe in themselves. Oop. Aack. We're all pretty tired of that story, to say nothing of how insulting it can be. Appreciate "All of the Above", then for turning that tired old chestnut of a parable into something fresh and new. Yes, the idea to create the world's biggest tetrahedron is thought up by Mr. Collins, the resident white math teacher. But the guy hasn't a clue what he's doing. He's pretty much willing to give up on the idea, the Math Club, and the project itself when the going gets a little rough. He's not goading these kids into doing more with their lives. Not much, anyway. Their families are doing that. And when push comes to shove he and the kids are helped by the janitor, hairstylists, and the owner of a barbecue joint far more than just dinky little Collins on his own. I half wondered if Pearsall plucked his name from "Pride and Prejudice", knowingly or on a subconscious level. Heaven knows it kind of fits him.

It's obvious that Pearsall has spent a fair amount of time in high schools across the country too. When James Harris III says, "You ever notice how school clocks do that? How they don't move like other clocks do; they jump ahead like bugs?". Yup. I've noticed that. So has every school librarian, teacher, and child attending public school in the United States of America. It just takes a well-attuned author to pick up on it. Pearsall zeroes in on other little things as well. I liked that for every foodstuff Marcel mentions there's an accompanying recipe that follows. This is true of even the less tasty treats, like "Willy Q's Cannonball Cornbread". The reader is informed at the end of the recipe to, "Cover and refrigerate leftovers. Trust me, there will be a lot". I also enjoyed that the first person narratives were sometimes voiced by adults as well as children. Sometimes books of this nature limit their narrative voices, thereby narrowing the possibilities for the story itself. Pearsall doesn't fall into that trap. If Rhondell's Aunt Asia is the best person to talk at a given point then that's who's talking. Nuff said.

What the book did that others of its ilk sometimes fail to is come across as timeless. The Nikki Grimes novel, Bronx Masquerade, may have sported some top notch writing, but the slang alone dated it within a year of its publication. This is not the case with, "All of the Above". For one thing, the slang is popular without being trendy. Pearsall doesn't spot the text with the newest technology, partly because her characters couldn't afford it, and partly because it would date the book considerably in a few years. I was also rather touched by how well Pearsall was able to distinguish between the voices of her characters. You wouldn't think Rhondell was talking when it was actually Sharice and vice versa. And I appreciate that there were happy endings in this book. Better still, they appear in a true and honest manner without so much as a whiff of Deus Ex Machina.

What didn't I like about the book? Well, it's hard to get around the fact that what the kids are trying to do is rather small. Then again, that's kind of the point. This isn't about getting everyone a free ride to Yale or anything. It's about breaking a world record, which is a seriously kid-friendly concept. Still, it's going to be difficult to sell this story to kids on that idea alone. "Hey, kids! Want to read about a class that glues tetrahedrons together?". Booksellers and librarians are going to have to hand sell and booktalk this one on an individual level. And even then it's not going to be a story for everyone. Add in the unattractive cover (note the school bus yellow shade) and you've a book that's going to have to work to get people to pick it up. Once they do they'll be fine. Just getting there is the difficulty.

To be honest, I don't think this book is going to get the attention it deserves. But for those few lucky souls who get a chance to read it, "All of the Above" is a lively wonderful recount of a project that actually occurred at the Alexander Hamilton School in 2002. Pearsall lists every true fact that she has put in the book in her Author's Note at the back and it offers the reader a sense of closure. This comes across as a fine title and one worth perusing. If you can, sneak it into the reading pile of a kid you know. You'll find them pleasantly surprised.

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Paperback edition has a winning cover design!

Really like the new cover design on the paperback edition of this great book by Shelley Pearsall. This story of a math club at an inner city school and their quest to construct the world's largest tetrahedron is a winner. Don't know what a tetrahedron is? That's another good reason to read this book. The paperback edition also has a pattern for a tetrahedron so kids can make their own. The recipes for barbecue sauces, cannonball cornbread and chocolate truth cake are extras that make this book special.

Richie's Picks: ALL OF THE ABOVE

Sharice:
"As we get closer to finishing, I start having dreams about what's gonna happen when we do. In most of my dreams, there is this big flash of light when we finish the tetrahedron and our school isn't a crumbling, peeling-paint building anymore. It's rainbow colored. (I know this sounds kinda weird.) And our giant pyramid sits on top of the school roof shooting out colors all over the neighborhood, like spotlights. Houses turn shades of red, and orange, and blue. And people stop their cars and roll down their windows to take pictures of the sight."

That their one-of-a-kind tetrahedron building project gets off the ground at all is astounding in itself. ALL OF THE ABOVE is a tale of four inner city public school kids -- none of whom are initially friends -- and their math teacher. The teacher, Mr. Collins, acknowledges that he was frustrated with his teaching, his school, his students, and himself when he impulsively announced his brainstorm: a plan to have students come together in an extracurricular math club for the purpose of building a stage seven Sierpinski tetrahedron.

"What the heck is a stage seven Sierpinski tetrahedron?" you might (or might not) be tempted to ask. Well, as I learned, thanks to Rhondell, the member of the student quartet with private dreams of one day attending college, it is a structure composed of 16,384 little tetrahedrons which, in turn, are three dimensional geometric shapes that have four faces, each of which is an equilateral triangle.

And to understand what about this particular book caught my eye -- a book that was formerly to be found amidst my stage seven mountain of review copies -- is to get a sense of my life-long affinity with numbers and mathematical concepts. For front and center on the book's cover is that key number 16,384, a number I instantly recognized as being part of my habitual childhood recitation of the exponents of 2. You know, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384...

Oh...you didn't walk around middle school with those sort of things streaming through your head? Well, regardless, readers will be intrigued by the four urban students (and the teacher) who are all facing personal challenges inside and outside of school:

James Harris III:

"I stare at the window behind Collins and think about how good it would feel to jump out that window and send all that glass flying into the air like one of those jagged comic book pictures with the word 'CRASH' written above it. Get out of school, Collins' class, all the other dumb teacher's classes -- and never come back."

Marcel:

"Ain't spending the rest of my life working at Willy Q's Barbecue. Saying sweet things to customers who don't deserve sweet. Smiling like I care about selling rib bones and chicken wings and pig meat.
"Ain't joining the Army either, like my daddy thinks. Won't salute nobody. Least of all, him."

Sharice:

"You see, foster non-parent #5 (Jolynn) doesn't allow anybody at home when she isn't there and since she isn't there most of the time, I'm not allowed to be there either. Which is why I mostly end up sitting in the blue plastic library chairs, or in the mall food court, or riding around on the city bus (or wherever I can find a seat without too many weirdos or drunks around)."

Rhondell:

"Sometimes I imagine college as a big wooden door where you have to knock and say the right password to get in. Only people who know big words like metamorphosis and epiphany are allowed inside. So, I think I try to save all the words I can because maybe, deep down, I believe they will somehow get me inside college without money or luck.
"But around here if you talk and act like you have dreams, or as if you think you are better than everybody else, it only causes trouble. So, I keep most of my college words locked up in my head, and I try to make it through each day by saying as few words as possible. 'She's quiet' is the way most people describe me, and I figure being quiet is just fine because it means you won't be bothered."

ALL OF THE ABOVE vaguely reminds me of The Breakfast Club. In this case you meet these four random students who just all happen to be in the same math class when their frustrated math teacher decides to launch a seriously wacked math project and all four kids wittingly or unwittingly find themselves captive to the process. And me, the former math team member, found myself right there with them.

So join in. Grab yourself a stack of colored paper, some scissors, a glue gun, some munchies, and partake in the Tetrahedron Club.

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Based on a true story, All of the Above is the delightful and suspenseful story of four inner city students and their quest to build the world's largest tetrahedron. Weaving together the different personal stories of the kids, their teacher, and the community that surrounds them, award-winning author Shelley Pearsall has written a vividly engaging story about the math, life and good-tasting barbecue. Filled with unexpected humor, poignant characters and quiet brilliance, All of the Above is a surprising gem.

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