Marvelous Middle Grade Monday-Twerp by Mark Goldblatt

Greetings and Happy Marvelous Middle Grade Monday all! Hope this last week has treated you all well and has been filled with some wonderful reads. I'm here this morning to tell you about a book a literally sank into. Told in first person by a boy named Julian it is a book filled with a cast of living breathing characters who I hope we get to meet in another book. Loved this like I loved Wednesday Wars, Okay for Now, Neil Armstrong is My Uncle and Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me. Highly recommend you get on out there and get yourself a copy for your shelves and take a step back in time to the sixties to meet a boy and his group of friends who today's kids could totally relate to. Plus, kudos to the author for taking what could be a viewed as typical-teacher makes student write in journal-and gives it a fresh and unique spin because it is completely and utterly character driven and therefore could not have been written any other way.

From Goodreads:

It's not like I meant for Danley to get hurt. . . .

Julian Twerski isn't a bully. He's just made a big mistake. So when he returns to school after a weeklong suspension, his English teacher offers him a deal: if he keeps a journal and writes about the terrible incident that got him and his friends suspended, he can get out of writing a report on Shakespeare. Julian jumps at the chance. And so begins his account of life in sixth grade--blowing up homemade fireworks, writing a love letter for his best friend (with disastrous results), and worrying whether he's still the fastest kid in school. Lurking in the background, though, is the one story he can't bring himself to tell, the one story his teacher most wants to hear.


Do head on back to Shannon Messenger's for more MMGM wonderfulness!