Yash is a fantastic athlete. He is so good that he plays on the high school JV team even though he is only in 8th grade! That is impressive! The problem is that to do this, his school had him skipping his P.E. class to head over to the high school. Apparently, that was wrong because the state stepped in to say that it is not allowed. Yash needs to fulfill his 8th-grade P.E. requirements to pass 8th grade. Which means Yash has to go to summer school. Summer school for P.E. is for the kids who are awful at sports; everyone calls them ‘slugs’, which is why summer school P.E. is called Slugfest.
I have to say that does suck. He is clearly a fantastic athlete, and he is clearly being active. Why wouldn’t he be able to opt out of P.E. or use his time at the high school as his P.E. credits? I’m sure I am looking too deeply into a middle-grade novel, but it is sucky of the state to do this.
There are other students in summer school as well. Cleo is there because she broke her foot skiing and ended up missing three months of school. She was always awesome at sports, but since her injury, she hasn’t played at all.
Twins Sarah and Stuart did something to get kicked out of P.E., so now they have to make it up. They spend most of their time trying to kill each other. Honestly, their parents are probably happy they are in summer school.
Fiona might be amazing on her water polo team, but she won’t put her face in the water; that means she didn’t pass the swim test.
Kaden is smart—like, he never got a grade lower than an “A”—but being that smart does put a target on your back. He is bullied a lot. He is bullied at lunch and on the bus, but the worst is the locker room. It got so bad that he finally started to skip P.E., but that pesky new state law caught up with him. So here he is, making up his P.E. requirements and the rest.
Jesse is the school prankster; he is there as punishment for all the pranks he has pulled over the school year. Spoiler: it hasn’t stopped him from pulling pranks.
Arabella is anti-gym, she didn’t fail exactly, she just skipped every class for the past three years. But she is also really into justice. She has to take summer P.E. but she chooses to sign up for Investigative Journalism. Her plan is to go after Big Gym. Why should every kid be forced to take P.E. Middle school me would have cheered her on!
As the summer goes on, Arabella really gets into her journalism class. She starts to dig deep into a scandal at the school. She wants to break this news to everyone—the teachers, principal, school board, and parents. Can the rest of the class keep her from ruining all their summer work?
I have found that many of this author’s books are really funny. I recommend this book and this author in general if you are looking for a wonderful story with a good number of laughs.
Four out of Five Magical Coffee Cups
Literary Coffee 