8th Grade Super Zero (review)

Comic-book geek Reggie started eighth grade on a sour note when he barfed on stage during a school assembly at his "smart kids' school" in New York City. Now known as Pukey, he's trying to figure out how to redeem his own reputation while making a difference in his community, along with his multicultural group of friends (Reggie is African American) who are strongly committed to social justice. Yeah, it's like that in this story of eighth-grade politics, which sits atop a whole lot of platitudes about how people need to give more than lip service to community involvement. Reggie participates in a service project at a local homeless shelter through his church youth group, and when he realizes that some of the kids from his school live at the shelter, he tries, with an amazing amount of success, to get more kids involved; every time he goes to the shelter, there are more kids from school painting, playing with the kids, setting up a library corner, leading a drama club. The veneer of story actually holds up fairly well until the last third of the book, when it thins to speeches about helping out, making a difference, doing your part, etc. Despite the fact that these kids are hyperaware of things like environmental racism and image politics, they remain credible in their emotional registers, and the fairy-tale morality—with kids who are out for themselves being ugly and disliked, while those interested in helping others are hot or at least kissable—is just subtle enough to go mostly unnoticed. Reggie himself is particularly believable as a guy who asks the big questions, seeks answers in the Bible and himself, and ends up realizing that nothing is ever simple.