Concerning & Potentially Concerning Content

There are no major concerns here, but there is a decent list of smaller items we will bring up below: Someone is called the “most truthful girl”, but the example given is her being the “only person with the courage to tell our substitute teacher that his mustache looked like a gigantic caterpillar crawled out of his nose and died on his upper lip” (basically covering up being mean as “honesty”). Public school is referred to multiple times as “real school” or “regular school” (obviously implying a contrast with homeschooling) There is an odd aspect of the story that the main character’s parents basically abandoned him for their careers that never really gets addressed. Chapters flip to show life through the eyes of various characters, which is neat, but it does lead to a couple of not great examples being spotlighted. One character is conceited and arrogant. Another is dishonest and has a really bad attitude and approach to school, including faking doing homework. The following references are made: A Justin Timberlake song, “His holiness” (talking about a bird), Hunger Games (books and movies), Harry Potter, MacGyver, Teen Vogue, Woodstock, santa. “Punk Rock” is brought up in a positive context. The worst is a really strange reference to the “Crypt Keeper”. A lady is said to be a writer of “romance novels”. The following phrases are used: “sweetness of revenge” (although in this case it is relative to a bully who ends up causing the “revenge” on himself), “probably hang you from a flag pole”, “I should have invited him to jump off of a cliff”, “like an axe murderer”, “miscarriage of justice”, “God only knows”, “rap lyrics”, nerd, geek, weirdo, jerks, average nobody, creep, loser, rave, shut up, rock star. Someone says that “everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the reason is you’re stupid and make bad decisions”. A flunking kid says, “If you take school too seriously, you waste your life doing homework and paying attention and making yourself miserable”. There are a lot of names used to refer to the elderly (although in the story many are used by the seniors themselves). Some examples (most used many times): old folks, geezers, fossil farm, old fogeys. These don’t typically come across as insults in the book, but good to know they are there.