collected
Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Children's
About 4 h 15 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 9 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
At an American high school, ninth-grader Philip Malloy blames his English teacher for the failing grade keeping him off the track team. Hoping to get transferred out of her class, he hums during the national anthem despite a rule requiring silence. The dispute becomes national news, with parents, school officials, and reporters arguing over patriotism and Philip’s right to participate.
Told through diary entries, memos, letters, conversations, and news reports, the YA novel reads as a satirical dossier on school politics and distorted information. There’s no guiding narrator: the work of comparing private motives with public statements falls to the reader.
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
Established
Not really, but the fragmented structure takes attention. The prose is direct and dialogue driven; diary entries, memos, letters, conversations, and news reports leave you to compare conflicting accounts without a guiding narrator.
Yes, the pace is brisk, with events unfolding through documents and conversations. The tone stays tense and unsettling as a dispute at school becomes national news.
Truth and the distortion of information are central. Philip’s dispute with his English teacher becomes a public argument about patriotism and freedom, while private motives and public statements pull in different directions.
The YA novel suits someone interested in school politics, satire, and competing versions of events. Its dossier format asks you to weigh what students, parents, school officials, and reporters say for yourself.
208 pages in the Scholastic Paperbacks 2010 paperback edition.
Scholastic Paperbacks · 2010 · paperback. ISBN 9780545174152.
About 4 hours 15 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 208-page Scholastic Paperbacks edition. Dense books can take longer.
Avi, the pen name of Edward Irving Wortis, is an American writer whose books for children and young adults range across historical fiction, fantasy, mystery, comedy, and realistic fiction. His work is unusually varied in form but consistently direct in its storytelling, placing young protagonists in situations where received accounts of courage, authority, or civic duty begin to break down. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle and The Fighting Ground turn historical adventure into an encounter with fear, coercion, and moral confusion, while Sophia’s War connects public revolution with a girl’s decision to act. In Nothing but the Truth, a minor school conflict expands through competing voices into a satire of institutional behavior and public controversy. Even the animal fantasy Poppy centers on resistance to arbitrary power, while The Secret School treats education as something its heroine must preserve for herself. This combination of narrative momentum, formal range, and close attention to young people testing official versions of events distinguishes Avi’s work. He received the Newbery Medal for Crispin: The Cross of Lead.
Francisco Jiménez
Literary Fiction · Children's · Young Adult
