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 Last Boy at St. Edith's by Lee Gjertsen Malone, 2016

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Seventh grader Jeremy Miner has a girl problem. Or, more accurately, a girls problem. Four hundred and seventy-five of them. That's how many girls attend his school, St. Edith's Academy.
Jeremy is the only boy left after the school's brief experiment in coeducation. And he needs to get out. His mom won't let him transfer, so Jeremy takes matters into his own hands: He's going to get expelled.
Together with his best friend, Claudia, Jeremy unleashes a series of hilarious pranks in hopes that he'll get kicked out with minimum damage to his permanent record. But when his stunts start to backfire, Jeremy has to decide whom he's willing to knock down on his way out the door.
Written with equal parts humor and heart, Lee Gjertsen Malone's debut is all about fitting in, standing out, and finding the place where you belong.

(224 pages)

Honestly, sometimes I struggle more writing the "meh" reviews than I do with reviewing books that incite stronger reactions in me. I think it's because the very fact that they're "meh" books means a) I have a much harder time even remembering the story enough to discuss it and b) I don't have any burning reactions I'm just dying to spit out on the page.

I mean, I liked the book - sure I did. I requested it in the first place because I loved the idea of a boy being stuck as the very last male attending an all-girl school, surrounded by no one but females all day long. I thought it was a pretty cool angle, one that I'd never seen done before, and I was excited to see it put into action.

And on one hand I enjoyed the book, because it does offer what it promises: the story revolves around Jeremy's struggle to fit in at an all-boys school, and his attempts to get expelled through a series of pranks that are mainly the brainchild of his best friend Claudia. The thing that hurts the story, for me at least, is that this is pretty much it for interesting storylines. The other storylines aren't very interesting (to me at least - you might find them more to your taste), and one - with the girl Jeremy has a crush on, and a girl who announces late into the book that she has a crush on him - is honestly just sort of cringeworthy. And I don't really like the thoughtless way Jeremy treats the people around him throughout the story.

I enjoyed reading The Last Boy at St. Edith's, but at the same time I wasn't completely engrossed. I don't usually flip forward to see how many pages are left, but I caught myself doing just that in this book. And it's not because I was thinking "oh, this is such a horrible book," but just because the small void in the back of my head wasn't absorbed enough in the story to stay quiet, and so it started whispering distracting things like, "I wonder how long this book is? Let's flip forward and see!"

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying The Last Boy at St. Edith's was the worst book ever or anything like that. It's got a cool premise, and I bet there are a lot of people out there who would absolutely love it. I'm just not one of those people, and while I did enjoy reading it - I swear I did! I'm sorry if this review is too negative! - I instantly forgot it when I put the book down. And I may come back and read it again in the future, if I'm bored and I see it sitting on a shelf, but I'm not so in love with it that I am purposefully planning to return to it someday; in fact, with all the amazing books out there just waiting to be discovered, I doubt I'll ever wind up reading this one again.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary ARC of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Only Girl in School by Natalie Standiford, 2016

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From the acclaimed author of The Secret Tree comes the story of a girl who finds herself a sudden outsider in the loneliest place in the world--middle school.
When Claire's best friend moves away just before the start of fifth grade, Claire suddenly becomes the only girl in the entire elementary school. While the boys are resentful that she gets a bathroom all to herself, Claire soon sees the lonelier side of things--until a few incidents put her quite literally in the spotlight.

(256 pages)

I wonder what it is about playing with gender in schools.

This isn't the first book I've reviewed this year about someone attending a school with a bunch of classmates of the opposite gender. In fact, Lee Gjertsen Malone's The Last Boy at St. Edith's is almost the exact same story as The Only Girl in School, except with a gender swap - here it's a girl amongst boys, and in the other it's a boy amongst girls.

The thing is, though, that even though the two books are so similar they still manage to have some very large differences - mainly with the setting and the side-plots - and Standiford manages to win me over far more than Malone ever did. And it's sad, because I really love the concept and would have happily gobbled up two books approaching it from opposite sides (in fact, that's why I requested ARCs of both books), but The Only Girl in School does such a great job (and without the attempts at political correctness) that The Last Boy at St. Edith's pales in comparison.

Enough about The Last Boy at St. Edith's, though - my review of that book will go live in a couple of weeks, and you can more of my thoughts about it then. In the meantime, let's talk about Standiford's novel. Do I think it was the best book ever, and that it will be raised up onto pillars of greatness and admired for all of eternity? Why no, no I don't. But I did enjoy it, from the small-town setting to Claire's lonely outcast position, and I was engaged from page 1 to page 256. And yes, the book doesn't even hit three-hundred pages. It's pretty short, definitely, but there's enough going on that it doesn't feel overly clipped.

A word about the setting: I actually lived in Maryland for four and a half years (up until two months ago!), so I thought I knew most of what there was to know about it. I never imagined, though, that the same state that held Baltimore City could have such a small-town island like the one Claire lives on. Claire's home in The Only Girl in School actually reminds me a lot more of Quinnie's in The Maypop Kidnapping (my review) than it does of my own experiences in Maryland. And I find that really funny because The Maypop Kidnapping is set in rural Maine, which is not really something I would normally associate with Maryland. The author bio says that Standiford was born and raised in Maryland, though, so I'm just going to assume her home was more rural than mine and that the setting is realistic. It makes me interested in finding out whether Foyes Island is a real place.

The technique of telling the story in letters actually works really well here, much better than the diary format I've seen in some other books. A few times Bess (the girl who moved away, leaving Claire as the last female student) responds to Claire's letters, and we don't get to read her letters but we do get the gist of what she says through Claire's responses. That works really well to keep the narration realistic (and often funny), while still keeping the narrative focus squarely on Claire.

The only other thing I wanted to touch on was the bullying that Claire faces at school, the majority of which rings true. I didn't really like Henry's mean behavior throughout the novel, because he's a total jerk to his ex-best friend and his motives (which are explained in the denouement) are: a) no real excuse, and b) kind of unrealistic, considering how old they're supposed to be. I understand the need for him to behave the way he does, for the sake of the plot, but I still kind of hate him for caving so easily to societal expectations and basically dumping his best friend in the dirt the minute she was slightly uncool. I also don't completely approve of the way Claire treats Gilbert, the boy with a crush on her whom she calls "Yucky Gilbert."

All in all, though, this was a fun read that I really enjoyed. It's the kind of story I can see being a big hit with kids in elementary and middle school, and which would make a fun discussion starter about bullying and the struggle to fit in.

Also, I bet kids will love Claire's hunt for Smuggler Joe's treasure.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary ARC of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.