Benjamin Franklin--Huge Pain in my...

August 17, 2015
Zweibel (Our Tree Named Steve) and Mansbach (Go the F*** to Sleep) blend bathroom humor, postal time travel, and the indignities of seventh grade in this (mostly) epistolary novel. As part of a class assignment, Franklin "Ike" Saturday writes a letter to his namesake, Benjamin Franklin. Reverent, he is not. Calling Franklin a "stringy-haired old windbag," Ike goes on to say the Founding Father must have been drunk when he wrote "A stitch in time saves nine," before sharing a friend's recipe for Jungle Juice. Needless to say, Ike is shocked to receive a letter from Franklin in return, and he is even more surprised to hear that the man had many troubles of his own, whether it's being overshadowed by his fellow Founding Fathers or having "ample girth in areas where less would have sufficed, and a dearth in others." Wink, wink. It's clear that Ike is a good, well-meaning kid at heart, but readers will need an appetite for crass jokes, beer-stealing episodes, and vomiting on crushes to see it. Ages 10â14. Agent: (for Zweibel) Laura Nolan, Paradigm; (for Mansbach) Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment.

July 15, 2015
The author of Go the Fuck to Sleep (2011) joins Zweibel to craft a (somewhat) more conventional tale, featuring a seventh-grader who gets unexpected help navigating middle school rapids. In a plotline wrought from standard-issue tropes, from stepdad issues and feeling left behind by peers to poop references and vomiting all over a crush, the authors do get in some memorable twists. Assigned to write a letter to a historical figure, Franklin "Ike" Saturday pens a whiny missive to his namesake that gets mailed-and, unexpectedly, elicits a response from the great man himself. Purportedly, anyway: "old" Franklin's spiteful reference to Jefferson as "a slave owner with a multitude of unaccounted-for progeny" and later boast of "lamps that represent the cutting edge in whale oil-fueled technology" sound strangely modern. In any case, the two Franklins find common ground in a regular, if irregularly capitalized, correspondence ("I'm very Grateful, and anything I can do to help you Screw Over Jefferson and the rest of those clowns, just let me know"). Meanwhile, against all odds, Ike hits it off with dazzling classmate Claire Wanzandae, particularly after the vomiting incident (caused by a boneheaded effort to impress by chugging beer) triggers an exchange of heartfelt letters of apology. Sending old Franklin modern documents that threaten to derail the American Revolution will definitely be harder to fix...stay tuned. The episode's coyly blacked-out title is no more than a marketing ploy, as the correspondence is generally an amicable one. A mildly enjoyable if open-ended romp. (Fantasy. 10-13)

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November 1, 2015

Gr 5-7-Franklin Isaac (Ike) Saturday writes a letter to Benjamin Franklin for an extra credit school assignment. After all, he is named after the man. In the letter, he shares some rather personal details about his life, including his resentment of his stepfather (Dirk the Jerk) and his crush on Claire Wanzandae. After inadvertently mailing the letter with one of his stepfather's old stamps, he is stunned to receive a reply. At first he thinks it's a joke, but it becomes apparent that it isn't. As Ike struggles to navigate his relationship with Claire, he makes some pretty bad choices, which get him in major trouble, both at home and at school. He turns to Benjamin Franklin for help. Little effort is made to be historically accurate; the jokes are the focus here. The letters from Franklin are full of large words and unusual punctuation similar to those used at the time (for example, capital letters are often inserted in the middle of sentences). This will be challenging for reluctant readers to understand, though the humor is squarely targeted at this market. As the story progresses, Ike's decisions, while well-intentioned, go from bad to worse. At one point, he sneaks out at two in the morning to meet Claire and her friends at an elementary school playground, taking some of his stepfather's beer with him (thought it turns out to be nonalcoholic). VERDICT A strictly additional purchase.-Heidi Grange, Summit Elementary School, Smithfield, UT

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