Being the only person of your color, language or religion at your school isn’t that uncommon. Lots of kids live this daily. It can be lonely and isolated, but they make friends and adapt.
Jeremy Miner, the protagonist of Lee Gjertsen Malone’s The Last Boy at St. Edith’s is isolated because he is the only boy at his school.
Publisher’s Summary:Seventh grader Jeremy Miner has a girl problem. Or, more accurately, a girls problem. 475 of them to be exact. That’s how many girls attend his school, St. Edith’s Academy.
Jeremy is the only boy left after the school’s brief experiment in co-education. And he needs to get out. But his mother—a teacher at the school—won’t let him transfer, so Jeremy takes matters into his own hands: he’s going to get expelled.
Together with his best friend Claudia, Jeremy unleashes a series of hilarious pranks in hopes that he’ll get kicked out with minimal damage to his permanent record. But when his stunts start to backfire, Jeremy has to decide how far he’s willing to go and whom he’s willing to knock down to get out the door.
When I was a librarian I would occasionally be asked for books about pranks. There aren’t as many as you might think. And though the book seems a little far-fetched, it really works. The characters are believable and Jeremy’s family life and friendship give some insight into economic disparities and gender roles. Yeah, these are all white kids, but it is still a good read about individuality, conformity, and friendship
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