by Gennifer Choldenko
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Nothing is the way it’s supposed to be when you live on an island with a billion birds, a ton of bird crap, a few dozen rifles, machine guns, and automatics, and 278 of America’s worst criminals — “the cream of the criminal crop” as one of our felons likes to say.”
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Review copy sent to me by the publisher

Perhaps it’s just been too long since I read Al Capone Does My Shirts, because I just didn’t find this one nearly as charming as I did that one. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy reading it; Choldenko still captures the mid-1930s very well, and the characters are still just as interesting as before. It’s just that this one is missing the novelty, the endearing charm, that made the first book so enjoyable to read.

The book picks up right where the first left off: Natalie is off to her special school; Moose is still trying to figure out inter-personal relationships, especially between his on-island friends and off-island friends, not to mention what to do with girls; there’s tension between the convicts and the guards and their families. The main source of conflict in this story isn’t with Natalie and her disability, however. It’s with Moose’s choice to get Al Capone to help Natalie getting into her school. There’s a lot of lying and covering up of the truth, not to mention sneaking around, in this book, which makes things more than slightly uncomfortable.

It is an interesting journey for Moose as he figures out that trying to handle things on his own doesn’t always work. In addition, there’s more middle school awkwardness, and a bit of a romance as well. However, the tough lesson he has to learn is that he can’t please everyone all the time, and that attempting to has dire consequences. It’s not a pretty lesson, either.

The ending was a bit overly dramatic for my tastes, however: it involved an escape attempt on the part of the convicts and Natalie using her quirkiness with her autism to save the day. It wasn’t bad, per se, just, well, more action-movie than middle grade book.

I guess you can’t win them all.