Rating: Needs Parent Supervision

Reading Level: Mid-Elementary, Late Elementary

At first I thought I wasn’t going to like this for the same reasons I didn’t like the teacher vs. student battle that dominated Frindle. But this one grew on me, especially when the teacher vs. student battle morphed into a collaborative fight against literary piracy, and a revelation about the importance of good writing and good citizenship. I also liked the bits about binary reasoning, effective writing, and good computer code.

Possible Concerns:

  • Challenging (with possibly disrespecting?) Authority. Just like with Frindle, there is what appears to be a battle between teacher and student. At times it feels disrespectful. However, in this book it morphs earlier on into a collaboration
  • Zen. The kid has a book called The Zen of Python (or something like that) which he quotes and refers to when trying to write good computer code.

Things I liked:

  • Intro to binary code and other computer facts.
  • Teacher and students joining together to fight for what is right.

Overall, I’d recommend this but with the caveat that you need to talk to your kid about what Zen is and why we don’t believe in it. If it weren’t for that issue I’d put in on my bookshelf; I liked it more than Frindle.