I Funny: A Middle School Story by James Patterson (review)

Billing himself as “the sit-down comic,” middle-schooler Jamie Grimm isn’t about to let the fact that he uses a wheelchair stop him from being a stand-up comedian; it’s his intense fear of public speaking that may prevent him from fulfilling his dream. Fortunately, with the encouragement of his loving uncle and few kooky friends, Jamie tries his act at Ronkonkoma’s Funniest Kid Contest and lo and behold, he wins. The video of his performance goes viral, he lands a few more gigs, and the laughs keep coming. Life is not all giggles and guffaws, however, as Jamie still has to deal with daily harassment from his bullying foster brother, he can’t for the life of him figure out how to talk to girls, and he has yet to truly come to terms with the accident that landed him in the wheelchair and left him without his parents and sister. Surprisingly unsentimental and not at all patronizing, this is a poignant but humorous story of moving on and finding joy in less than joyful moments. A connoisseur of comedy, Jamie mines a host of stand-up legends for his material (some of whom will be familiar to middle-school audiences while others will no doubt necessitate a few Google searches). His commentary about his disability feels particularly authentic, and while his condition is part of his story, it is not the defining aspect of it—the focus instead lies on Jamie overcoming his fears rather than his disability. In the end, Jamie is still in a wheelchair, still dealing with bullies, and still missing his folks, but he is managing to make himself and a few others laugh, and readers will find that to be more than enough Park’s cartoony spot illustrations add visual humor that matches the text’s jokey, feel-good tone.