Within Saturday, you will find four short stories about four six-graders on an Academic Bowl Team. They call themselves "The Souls." These stories are pulled together by the all-encompassing, yet strangely smaller plot of the Championship Bowl as told by the kids' coach and teacher, Mrs. Olinski. Mrs. Olinski's team not only wins the sixth-grade Academic Bowl contest, but they beat the seventh-grade and eighth-grade teams as well. So four six-graders find themselves facing four eighth-graders for the Championship. How did Mrs. Olinski put together such a terrific team?
"The fact was that Mrs. Olinski did not know how she had chosen her team, and the further fact was that she didn't know that she didn't know until she did know. Of course, that is true of most things: you do not know up to and including the very last second before you do." Very much like: you find your missing keys in the very last place you look. I love the language in this book. I struggle not to include quote after awesome quote.
What I find fun about this book is that each child seems to be chosen for their ability to answer an important question at the Championship Bowl. The short stories include how they happen to know the answer to the question amid a much larger story. It seems this way because the story is told in flashbacks. Mrs. Olinski is currently experiencing the Championship while the short stories occur the summer prior to the sixth-grade school year.
Reviewers have commented that the book is written for the more mature kids. Let's see, puberty is mentioned; bra straps; and grandparents' sex life. There is nothing graphic and certainly not anything that everyday kids don't overhear in the adult conversations around them. Imagine, "Damn it! I dropped the fork down the disposal!" and the response, "Honey, watch your language in front of the kids!" Another reason might be that the story is rich in symbolism and there are multiple levels of understanding. I would say that it is a book that can be read multiple times. Each time you read it, you will gain more insight. As a child grows, they can revisit this classic and be surprised by what they missed the first time.
I've also heard it said that students who were forced to read this book or listen to their teacher read this book, hated it. When it is read for pleasure, it is adored. I would agree with the same for almost any book.
I don't think it would surprise you to find out that all four of the members of the Academic Bowl team are strangely connected in more ways than one. They say that they called themselves "The Souls" before they became the Epiphany Middle School team known as "The Souls." But they will admit that it is an argument not unlike the age old - which came first? The chicken or the egg?
If you were here with me, I would read to you an excerpt that I love that I think gives a good picture of the level of humor within. But you're not so ...
So, when [Dr. Rohmer] asked her how she had chosen the four members of her academic team, Mrs. Olinski knitted her brow and answered with hushed seriousness. "In the interest of diversity," she said, "I chose a brunette, a redhead, a blond, and a kid with hair as black as newsprint."
Dr. Rohmer was not amused. he gave Mrs. Olinski a capsule lecture on what multiculturalism really means.
"Oh," she said, "then we're still safe, Dr. Rohmer. You can tell the taxpayers that the Epiphany Middle School team has one Jew, one half-Jew, a WASP, and an Indian."
"Jews, half-Jews, and WASPs have nothing to do with diversity, Mrs. Olinski. The Indian does. But we don't call them Indians anymore. We call them Native Americans."
"Not this one," she replied.
"Mrs. Olinski," Dr. Rohmer asked, "would you like it if people called you a cripple?"
Mrs. Olinski gave up. Everyone believed that she could be wounded by the word cripple. She could never explain to Dr. Rohmer, nor would she try to, that the word itself does not hurt, but the manner of its delivery can. For all of his training, Dr. Rohmer would never believe that cripples themselves are a diverse group, and some make jokes.
Some people are intelligent, but they just have no common sense. And they are the people who usually take themselves WAY TOO seriously! I hope you enjoyed!
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