The Truth About Rats, Rules, & Seventh Grade - Hardcover

Zinnen, Linda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060287993 ISBN 13: 9780060287993

Publisher: HarperColl, 2001

Synopsis

Larch Waysorta lives by The Rules:

1. Honor your mother.
2. Ace out school.
3. Be kind to small dogs and children.

What a bunch of stupid, stupid rules.

The Rules don't tell you what to do when your best friend is falling in love with a drop-dead gorgeous jerk. Or when your trailer turns into a winter home for every rat in Pottsville, Ohio. Or when you find out The Truth about the night your father died.

Do you sometimes have to break The Rules if you want to handle The Truth?

About this title

About the Author:

Linda Zinnen is the author of The Truth About Rats, Rules, & Seventh Grade, published by HarperCollins, which won the Parents' Choice Gold Medal. Her second book, Holding at Third, was published in 2003. Ms. Zinnen and her family used to live in Zanesville, Ohio. They now live in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

From School Library Journal:

Gr 4-7-Larch Waysorta lives with her mother in a trailer in Pottsville, OH. She is a good student who follows the rules set by the adults around her until a startling discovery turns her orderly world upside down. While interviewing the school custodian for a class assignment, the seventh grader inadvertently learns the shocking truth about her father's death nine years before. She has always known that he died in a car crash, but the newfound knowledge that her mother, who never talks about the accident or her late husband, was the driver ignites the girl's feelings of loss and anger. Sideline plots include the Waysortas' rat-infested trailer, a mangy rat-catching dog, and a smitten best friend. Larch's engaging first-person narrative, sense of humor, and propensity for list-making result in a quick read. Unfortunately, the exaggerated, unrelenting rat scenes are more horrific than comical. And even though the pooch turns out to be a hero of sorts, he is depicted as menacing and unfriendly throughout. Larch misjudges him in the same way she misjudges her own mother, though by the novel's end, she is ready to forgive them both. The characters on the whole are not sufficiently developed, and the plot meanders. Though the novel does have some redeeming qualities, it is not a first purchase.-Barbara Auerbach, New York City Public Schools

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperColl
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0060287993
• ISBN 13: 9780060287993
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160