Book: Pack of Dorks

Beth Vrabel put together something really good in this one.  The first part of the book annoyed me with the talk of kissing some a jerky boy just for the sake of gaining some kind of popularity, but that may be just the kind of ridiculous ploy fourth graders would come up with.  Popularity, as it turns out, is not always all it's cracked up to be, which Lucy learns from the other side.

This book fits with the theme of how to deal with bullies - and these turn out to be some absurdly mean bullies.  As far as the books from this year's Mark Twain Award nominees, Pack of Dorks is clearly in the upper part of the list. I found myself wondering how Lucy and Sam would ever win their battle here, but the parallels with their report about wolves is quite interesting.

From the author's website:

Lucy knows that kissing Tom Lemmings behind the ball shed will make her a legend. But she doesn’t count on that quick clap of lips propelling her from coolest to lamest fourth grader overnight. Suddenly Lucy finds herself trapped in Dorkdom, where a diamond ring turns your finger green, where the boy you kiss hates you three days later, where your best friend laughs as you cry, where parents seem to stop liking you, and where baby sisters are born different.

Now Lucy has a choice: she can be like her former best friend Becky, who would do anything to claim her seat at the cool table in the cafeteria, or Lucy can pull up a chair among the solo eaters—also known as the dorks. Still unsure, Lucy partners with super quiet Sam Righter on a research project about wolves. Lucy connects her own school hierarchy with what she learns about animal pack life—where some wolves pin down weaker ones just because they can, and others risk everything to fight their given place in the pack. Soon Lucy finds her third option: creating a pack of her own, even if it is simply a pack of dorks.

After reading Pack of Dorks, I found a sequel listed on Vrabel's website, and I was immediately saddened.  If you know me, you know how much I despise sequels to good books.  I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, but rarely are they as good as the original.  This one, in particular, looks like it fails to share the theme of the original story, but I could be wrong (They say there's a first time for everything.)