8TH GRADE SUPER ZERO

Though he imagines himself a superhero, Reginald McKnight threw up on the first day of school and acquired the less-than-cool nickname “Pukey”—now, he just wants survive the year “under the radar and on the sidelines.” Readers might legitimately fear this will be just another middle-school tale of plastic vomit, “puke-worthy” cafeteria food and snorting milk out of nostrils, but when Reggie gets involved with a service project at the Olive Branch Shelter to document the lives of the homeless, he realizes that “[e]ighth grade isn’t all there is to life.” When Reggie runs for class president, his platform becomes getting students involved in the community, with the shelter as a good place to start—as tutors, painters, babysitters, walking partners and after-school helpers. A good-hearted, nuanced story of a young man who dares to be more than his place in a middle-school social hierarchy, a tale rooted in religious faith and social conscience, related with lively good humor. (Fiction. 10-14)