Schooled

Literary fiction · Comedy

First published: 2007
Print length: 208 pagesScholastic, 2008

Description

Cap Anderson has grown up with his grandmother in an isolated hippie commune, far from television, conventional schooling, and the rules of adolescent popularity. When his grandmother is hospitalized, he enters a public middle school and becomes an immediate target. Bully Zach Powers arranges for the bewildered newcomer to be elected eighth-grade president as a prank, then devises escalating humiliations meant to break him. Cap responds with the habits he knows—kindness, patience, and an indifference to status—and befriends another social outcast. Told through first-person chapters from several characters, the novel shows Cap’s presence changing how students interpret both him and themselves. Its comedy of cultural collision becomes a coming-of-age story about conformity, cruelty, and the disruptive force of uncomplicated decency.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Conversational · Direct · Witty

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Hopeful · Humorous · Warm

Structure

Linear

Focus

Character · Relationships

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 2 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

BelongingComing of ageCommunityFriendshipIdentityMorality

About Gordon Korman

Gordon Korman writes children’s and young adult fiction that ranges from school comedy and farce to adventure and science fiction. His plots often begin with an adolescent dropped into a system that has already classified them as a bully, troublemaker, prodigy, or outsider. Direct, conversational prose and quick dialogue keep the action moving, while shifting viewpoints show how reputations are made and revised within a group. In Schooled, chapters narrated by several characters turn a prank election into a study of status, cruelty, and the influence of a boy who does not recognize the usual social rules. Restart uses amnesia to separate an eighth grader from his history as a bully, then measures change through his choices and other people’s guarded responses. Korman’s comic structures are often built from escalation. I Want to Go Home! sends one homesick camper through increasingly elaborate escape attempts, allowing friendship to develop inside the repeated failures. Even in the thriller plot of Masterminds, divided journeys and uncertain loyalties keep questions of identity tied to fast external action.

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Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Scholastic
Language: English
ISBN: 9780545098113

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