MY NAME IS BRAIN/BRIAN

Brian starts school hoping to do better this year, only to mess up by misspelling his own name the first day. Fortunately, his no-nonsense sixth-grade teacher is different from last year's pushover: not only does he spot Brian's previously undiagnosed dyslexia and arrange for an effective educational plan, but he's obviously an unsuitable butt for the pranks Brian and his three pals have projected for their ``Jokers' Club'' competition. Betancourt's profile of Brian's family is prototypical, if mostly plausible: his ``learning difference'' is in its third generation, but unsympathetic Dad (a carpenter) persists in thinking that Brian simply doesn't work hard enough. Meanwhile, the unusually intelligent Brian is lucky enough to be offered a fine combination of tutoring and mainstreaming with a gifted and resourceful teacher. He gets through the opprobrium associated with his new status with relative ease, begins to build on his real interests with a class project, and—in some pleasantly suspenseful exchanges—gets the better of his two less savory friends and comes to appreciate the third, plus an erstwhile enemy. Packaged with earnest intent and a somewhat pat outcome, but still a skillfully structured, entertaining story; Brian himself, struggling to redefine himself in terms of his newly discovered potential, is drawn with real insight. (Fiction. 8-12)