Is There Life After Sixth Grade? (Making the Grade Series) - Softcover

Welcome to Greatdale Elementary School, the setting of these four books. Each one's basic ingredients include one child-narrator with a problem, some preoccupied parents, a dense teacher, and a wise mentor to dispense the advice that leads to the obligatory happy ending. In Does Third Grade Last Forever? , Tracy is coping with her mother's remarriage, a move to a new town and school, and a stepbrother who likes her as little as she likes him. Her father helps her solve all difficulties. Mark is good at baseball and not much else, so when he is wrongly blamed for breaking a teacher's car windshield and banned from the team, he naturally wonders What's So Great About Fourth Grade? His mother counsels Mark and all ends well. In Fifth Grade Flop? , Andrew's problem is the reverse of Mark's. He's good in school, and especially in music, but a total klutz at sports. Wise advise from brother Rich helps Andrew cope. Amy wonders Is There Life After Sixth Grade? as she tries to get through life by wearing outlandish clothes and making wisecracks. By the end, she is set to march happily on to seventh grade. Predictable plots, manufactured crises, cardboard characters--these books provide formula fiction in spades. Awkward pencil drawings illustrate each volume, but fail to add any life or interest to these dreary slices of suburban life. --Elaine Fort Weischedel, Turner Free Library, Randolph, MA
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.