I Am Drums by Mike Grosso, 2016

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Sam knows she wants to be a drummer. But she doesn’t know how to afford a drum kit, or why budget cuts end her school’s music program, or why her parents argue so much, or even how to explain her dream to other people.

But drums sound all the time in Sam’s head, and she’d do just about anything to play them out loud—even lie to her family if she has to. Will the cost of chasing her dream be too high?

(256 pages)

I never really thought of drums as a guys-only instrument. Maybe that's because the only other character I've ever read about who plays the drums is Amanda in Wendy Mass's amazing Willow Falls series. It never really occurred to me that Amanda was doing something unusual by playing the drums, and I still don't really think she was. So in the first few chapters, when Sam kept thinking about how unusual she was for being a girl who played drums and about how offbeat her passion for music was, I was a little puzzled.

Luckily, the entire book doesn't consist of Grosso creating a faux-gender roles situation and then overcoming it. Instead, the book quickly moves to becoming a story about one girl's desperation to do the one thing that makes her happy. Sam goes through a huge amount of work to get her drum lessons, you've got to admire her devotion to drumming. I loved the character of her drum teacher (whom I can't name for fear of spoilers!)–he/she had just the right amount of passion, kindness, and grumpiness to make a realistic yet lovable mentor. As for Sam's parents . . . yeah. I don't really want to talk about them, because her father is so unkind to her that I can't stand him.

Though, now that I think about it, Sam could have pushed her parents a little harder on the drum issue before sneaking around behind their backs. As far as I can tell, she asked her father a grand total of two times (both when she could already tell he was in a bad mood), and immediately wilted when he snapped at her. Plus, why was it always her father that she asked? Considering the fact that Sam's mom was the one really bringing in a paycheck, you'd think she'd be the one getting the final say over whether her daughter could pursue a new hobby. For the majority of the book, she has a very wallflower-like presence in Sam's life. It's never specifically stated in these terms, but I think Sam's dad is sexist. This could also explain why it was so firmly ingrained into her head that playing the drums was a masculine activity (and thus not something she was really supposed to enjoy)–her dad could have put some weird ideas about gender roles into her head.

That's my two cents, anyway. I did enjoy I Am Drums, even though I wanted to smack almost every main character at least once. It's an interesting novel, full of a variety of important themes. I don't know that it is very memorable, though–a year from now, it will probably have faded into my memory, woven in with all the other books I've read which feature misunderstood pre-adolescent girls with special abilities and unhappy parents. I enjoyed it while it lasted, though, and you could too. If you've read I Am Drums, comment below to let us know what you thought of it!

Disclaimer: I won a complimentary ARC of this novel, which was provided by the author, in a giveaway on Tweens Read Too.

The Twinning Project by Robert Lipsyte, 2012

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Tom is a smart, talented loner with a chip on his shoulder and a big secret: an imaginary twin on another planet. Eddie is Tom's opposite, a friendly, athletic kid who always looks on the good side. Tom worries sometimes: does confiding in Eddie mean he's nuts? The truth is even crazier than that. Eddie and his planet are just as real as Tom and his Earth, but fifty-some years in the past. And the twins are caught up in an alien master plan that might just mean Earth—both Earths—will be destroyed. Switching places and identities, "slipping" between planets and across decades, a desperate escape, and the unraveling of deeper secrets leave Tom and Eddie aware of the danger they're facing and the tools they can use to overcome it.

(272 pages)

This was a very interesting sci-fi premise, one that harks back to a lot of traditional elements of the genre (aliens, hidden powers, clones - or in this case twins - etc).

 Before I go any further, I have to get this off of my chest: the most immature scene was when the boys decided to prove that they were twins by comparing the spots on their butt cheeks where they'd been attached until surgical separation after birth. They literally pull down their pants and stand cheek to cheek to verify their story. It's gross.

Besides that one scene, which I'm sure most middle schoolers would roll with (or, more realistically, laugh at), the book is honestly pretty palatable for people of all ages. It's geared toward middle schoolers, though. It's a little more simplistic, not delving nearly as deep into the implications of this scenario as I would have liked, and the maturity level of the two main characters leaves something to be desired. Tom especially is very sketchily drawn; we're just supposed to recognize and accept that he's some great misunderstood tech genius who doesn't play well with others when really he just seems like a rude know-it-all who occasionally has some very deus-ex machina-type gadgets.

I do like the supporting characters, though, and I'm a sucker for stories about kids from the past trying to pass in the present. I haven't read very many, so the time we get watching Eddie from the 60's try to pretend he's a modern millennial was pretty fun. His attempts to get people off of their phones may have been slightly cheesy/unrealistically successful, but I still enjoyed reading about them.

Honestly, what you see is what you get. If this interests you, then go for it. Also, I think there's going to be a sequel. I have no idea when/if that's ever going to happen, though, and I'm not really interested enough to find out. The Twinning Project just really didn't thrill me the way that I'd hoped.

The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt, 2007

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In this Newbery Honor-winning novel, Gary D. Schmidt offers an unforgettable antihero. The Wednesday Wars is a wonderfully witty and compelling story about a teenage boy’s mishaps and adventures over the course of the 1967–68 school year in Long Island, New York.
Meet Holling Hoodhood, a seventh-grader at Camillo Junior High, who must spend Wednesday afternoons with his teacher, Mrs. Baker, while the rest of the class has religious instruction. Mrs. Baker doesn’t like Holling—he’s sure of it. Why else would she make him read the plays of William Shakespeare outside class? But everyone has bigger things to worry about, like Vietnam. His father wants Holling and his sister to be on their best behavior: the success of his business depends on it. But how can Holling stay out of trouble when he has so much to contend with? A bully demanding cream puffs; angry rats; and a baseball hero signing autographs the very same night Holling has to appear in a play in yellow tights! As fate sneaks up on him again and again, Holling finds Motivation—the Big M—in the most unexpected places and musters up the courage to embrace his destiny, in spite of himself.

This book . . . it was good. Really good. And I don't really know what I can say in this review, other than that. It's not exactly my go-to type of book, mainly because of the age of the main character. A lot of the events that take place in the book still make me cringe just thinking about them - but at the same time, they were pulled off more tastefully here than anywhere else I've ever read them. This is probably the least gag-worthy middle school romance I've ever read, due in large part to the fact that the romance doesn't take center stage. In fact, if the book doesn't mention numerous times that it's set in middle school, I could easily have mistaken it for a high school romance, not because of mature content but because of the maturity of feelings both characters show for each other - they may not have always been on the same wavelength, but at least they didn't spend the whole book in an on-again-off-again relationship.

One thing I loved in the book was the copious amount of Shakespeare references. Holling begins halfway through the book to use Shakespeare lines such as "toads, beetles, bats, light on you!" as his go-to curses, and the results are rather hilarious. He also begins to mix and match his Shakespeare lines, making up his own curses like "strange stuff, the dropsy drown you." His teacher Mrs. Baker seems really awesome, and for once in my life I almost envied a public school kid for having teachers who weren't his parents! But then again, my parents aren't as horrible as Holling's so I don't need a teacher like Mrs. Baker.

And tthat brings me to Holling's family. I hate his father, I really do. I also have zero sympathy for his mother. The father steamrolls, the mother gets steamrolled, and anything and everything must be sacrificed in the pursuit of appearances for the sake of his father's career. The first time his father told Holling to behave nicely to someone because it was important to his father's career, I was okay with it. The second time I was annoyed. By the end of the book, if he so much as started a sentence with the phrase "____? As in related to ____?" I just wanted to punch him. When  Holling talked about his life, all his father heard was "business potential!" I empathized much more with Holling's sister Heather. She was about my age, and supported everything her father detested. She wanted to join the flower children in protest against the Korean war, but her father basically called her an idiot who would make him look bad in front of potential customers, and forced her to act the part of the perfect daughter. I don't blame her at all for what she did later in the book, and I love Holling all the more for the way he was the only one who supported her when things got rough.

Basically, this is probably one of the best Newberry Honor books I have ever read. If you think it looks interesting, then go read it! I promise it's worth your time.