the homework machine by ann gianola

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What a Sixty-Five-Year-Old Book Teaches Us About A.I.

By David Owen

Neural networks have become shockingly good at generating natural-sounding text, on almost any subject. If I were a student, I’d be thrilled—let a chatbot write that five-page paper on Hamlet’s indecision!—but if I were a teacher I’d have mixed feelings. On the one hand, the quality of student essays is about to go through the roof. On the other, what’s the point of asking anyone to write anything anymore? Luckily for us, thoughtful people long ago anticipated the rise of artificial intelligence and wrestled with some of the thornier issues. I’m thinking in particular of Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin, two farseeing writers, both now deceased, who, in 1958, published an early examination of this topic. Their book—the third in what was eventually a fifteen-part series—is “ Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine .” I first read it in third or fourth grade, very possibly as a homework assignment.

Danny Dunn, you may recall, is a “stocky and red-haired” elementary schooler. His father is dead, and he and his mother live with Professor Euclid Bullfinch, “a short, plump man with a round bald head,” who teaches at Midston University. Bullfinch “took the place of the father Danny had never known,” the book explains, and Mrs. Dunn supports herself and her son by working as his cook and housekeeper. We aren’t told how Danny’s father died—heart attack? car accident? murder?—and we know next to nothing about sleeping arrangements in the house. (“Now take your fingers out of my cake, Professor Bullfinch,” Mrs. Dunn says in the first book in the series.) But we do know that Bullfinch encourages Danny’s interest in science and lets him fool around in his private laboratory, which occupies “a long, low structure at the rear of the house.”

Danny’s best friend is Joe Pearson, “a thin, sad-looking boy”; his next-door neighbor is Irene Miller, whose father, an astronomer, also teaches at Midston. We can tell right away that Irene knows at least as much about science as Danny does—and way more than Joe, whose main academic interests are literary. As the story begins, Danny is demonstrating a recent invention of his: a piece of wood, suspended by clothesline from a pair of pulleys attached to the ceiling, into which he has inserted two pens. When he writes with either pen, the other creates a duplicate on a second sheet of paper. (This device is called a polygraph; Thomas Jefferson owned several.) “Now I can do our arithmetic homework while you’re doing our English homework,” he tells Joe. “It’ll save us about half an hour for baseball practice.” Joe runs home to get more clothesline, and Danny dreams of bigger things: “If only I could build some kind of a robot to do all our homework for us. . . .”

The boys don’t perceive a moral dilemma, but Irene does. “It—it doesn’t seem exactly honest to me,” she says. Danny disagrees, and cites his landlord: “Professor Bullfinch says that homework doesn’t have much to do with how a kid learns things at school.”

Williams and Abrashkin were all the way out at the cutting edge, technology-wise. In their first book, “ Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint ,” Danny and Bullfinch accidentally invent a liquid that causes anything coated with it to rise off the ground. That book was published in 1956, a year before the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 , but in Chapter 3 we learn that a similar satellite is already orbiting Earth, and is viewable through a telescope in Bullfinch’s lab. Long story short: the American government uses the paint on a spaceship, which accidentally lifts off while Danny, Joe, Bullfinch, and another scientist are inside it, having a look around. During their voyage, Danny completes an assignment that his teacher, Miss Arnold, has given him as punishment for daydreaming about rockets when he was supposed to be paying attention to her: writing “Space flight is a hundred years away” five hundred times.

Some of the scientific innovations portrayed in the Danny Dunn books are so advanced that they are still in the future—time travel, invisibility, smallification—but others have come into existence more or less as Williams and Abrashkin described them. In “ Danny Dunn and the Automatic House ,” published in 1965, Danny persuades the university to build what would nowadays be called a smart home ; it’s equipped with “the newest developments in electronic control systems,” including a voice-activated door lock, a Roomba-like self-propelled vacuum cleaner, and a bathtub that fills itself with water, adds soap, and announces, “Your bath is ready.” Danny’s mother is skeptical: “Once you start trying to save work by putting in machines, you may find you’re spending all your time taking care of the machines and not getting any fun out of your work. This kitchen is my studio—my laboratory, just like your laboratory, Professor. Would you want an automatic laboratory?”

Bullfinch says that he most certainly would not—but in “Homework Machine” we learn that he has built a computer with similar capabilities. It’s a scaled-down version of two mainframes that Williams and Abrashkin saw, during a visit to I.B.M., while they were researching their book. Bullfinch calls it Miniac:

A high panel at the back of the desk was filled with tiny light bulbs. There were a number of flat, square buttons, each with a colored panel above it. And beyond the desk was an oblong, gray metal cabinet, about the size of a large sideboard, with heavy electric cables leading to it.

An important difference between Miniac and the real computers of the nineteen-fifties—and another area in which Williams and Abrashkin were ahead of their time—is that its input medium is spoken English, not punched cards or paper tape. Danny asks Irene to demonstrate. She approaches the microphone and, following Bullfinch’s advice to “speak slowly and clearly so that Miniac can understand you and translate your words into electrical impulses,” says, “Um . . . John buys 20 yards of silk for thirty dollars. How much would 918 yards of silk cost him?” The professor presses a button, lights flash, and the typewriter responds: “$1,377.00.” After a pause, it adds, “And worth it.”

Any qualms that Irene has about getting help with her homework disappear when she discovers how much of it Miss Arnold assigns. One day, Irene asks Danny (at first, by shortwave radio) for help with a grammar exercise, and they meet in Bullfinch’s lab. Minny—as they now refer to the computer—defines “predicate noun” for her, and provides an example: “You are a fool .” Danny is suddenly inspired: “Why can’t we use Minny as a homework machine ?”

Bullfinch, conveniently, has asked Danny to keep an eye on Minny while he attends some important meetings in Washington, D.C. During the next few days, Danny, Irene, and Joe read large stacks of books into the microphone. As Danny explains, mainly to Joe, “Programming is telling the machine exactly what questions you want answered and how you want them answered. In order to do that right, you have to know just what sequences of operation you want the machine to go through.” When they’ve finished, Minny does their math problems for them, then starts on social studies.

“Man!” Joe says. “This is the way to do your homework. This is heaven!”

I hesitate to give away too much of the plot, but (spoiler alert!) two mean boys in their class, one of whom is jealous of Irene’s interest in Danny, watch them through a window and tattle to Miss Arnold. She comes to Danny’s house to confer with him and his mother—and you know that Danny is in trouble, because his mother suddenly starts calling him Dan. But he defends what he and his friends have been up to. Grocers and bankers now use adding machines instead of doing arithmetic the old-fashioned way, he says; why should students be different? Surprisingly, this argument works. Miss Arnold tells Danny that she wishes he wouldn’t let Minny do his homework, but that she won’t stop him.

Then the story becomes complicated. Irene tricks the jealous boy, Eddie (Snitcher) Philips, into revealing that he spied on them, then pushes him into a puddle. Eddie and his friend get revenge by sabotaging Minny. Bullfinch returns from Washington and is embarrassed when he tries to demonstrate Minny to two other scientists, one of whom is from the “Federal Research Council.” Danny saves the day by deducing that Eddie must have disconnected Minny’s temperature sensor; he reconnects it, and is treated as a hero. (This turn of events will be familiar to readers of the “Curious George” books, in which George is often praised for solving problems that he himself created.)

Bullfinch and one of the visiting scientists later program the repaired computer to write music, by giving it “full instructions for the composition of a sonata, plus information on note relationships,” and by modifying the typewriter so that it can print musical scores. Still, Bullfinch insists, Minny is limited in ways that humans are not. “It can never be the creator of music or of stories, or paintings, or ideas,” he says. “The machine can only help, as a textbook helps. It can only be a tool, as a typewriter is a tool.” He points out that Danny, in order to program Minny to do his homework, had to do the equivalent of even more homework, much of it quite advanced. (“Gosh, it—it somehow doesn’t seem fair,” Danny says.)

At least until recently, almost everyone has thought of computers in roughly that way. When Bullfinch and his friend play a sonata that Minny has written for them, Mrs. Dunn observes that “it isn’t exactly Beethoven”—and Bullfinch agrees. Yet Minny’s abilities clearly surpass those of a mere “tool.” The children “program” it by loading it with tagged examples, from which Minny somehow produces individualized schoolwork—a method that seems less like mid-twentieth-century programming than like the way that A.I. researchers create algorithms today. (Minny also editorializes , as with its comment about the price of silk and its example of a predicate noun.) Williams and Abrashkin foresaw a less serious practical use for artificial intelligence, too. “You know, we ought to enter her in one of those TV quiz shows,” Joe says in an early chapter, anticipating the “Jeopardy!” triumph, fifty-three years later, of I.B.M.’s Watson.

“Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine” is ostensibly about computers, but it also makes an argument about homework. In a note at the beginning of the book, Williams and Abrashkin write, “In all fairness to both Professor Bullfinch and Danny, we wish to point out that their position on homework is supported by Bulletin 1248-3 of the Educational Service Bureau, University of Pennsylvania.” I haven’t managed to turn up a copy of that bulletin, which was called “What About Homework?,” but I’ve found a number of other publications, from multiple decades, that arrive at what I assume are similar conclusions. For example, in 2007 the education critic Alfie Kohn—whose many books include “ The Homework Myth ,” published in 2018—wrote that “there is absolutely no evidence of any academic benefit from assigning homework in elementary or middle school,” and that in high school “the correlation is weak and tends to disappear when more sophisticated statistical measures are applied.” One problem with homework is that it inevitably encourages the counterproductive over-involvement of parents. (When my kids were young, I suggested to one of their teachers that he conduct a science fair for fathers only.) There’s also the issue of homework whose sole purpose is to squeeze in material that should have been covered during the school day but wasn’t. Miss Arnold offers precisely that justification for some of her huge assignments: the size of her class has nearly doubled, because of rapid population growth in Midston, and she is no longer able to give individual students as much attention as she once did.

Miss Arnold also assigns homework for a suspect reason that’s described in a paper published under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Education, in 1988: “Punishing assignments exercise the teacher’s power to use up time at home that would otherwise be under the student’s control. The assignments often center on behavior rather than academic skills, and stress embarrassment rather than mastery.” That’s what she was up to with all those sentences she made Danny write, back in the first book in the series. Luckily for everyone, Danny handled his embarrassment with aplomb, by writing most of the sentences during downtime in outer space, and the mindlessness of the exercise did no permanent harm to his imagination. At the end of “Homework Machine”—as he, Irene, and Joe are heading to the drugstore to celebrate Minny’s resurrection—he suddenly has “a strange, wild look in his eyes, and a faraway smile on his lips.” He says, “This is just a simple idea I had. Listen—what about a teaching machine. . . .”

Irene, as always, knows better. “Grab his other arm, Joe,” she shouts. “He needs a soda—fast.” ♦

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The Homework Machine

• 4.4 • 219 Ratings

Publisher Description

Doing homework becomes a thing of the past! Meet the D Squad, a foursome of fifth graders at the Grand Canyon School made up of a geek, a class clown, a teacher's pet, and a slacker. They are bound together by one very big secret: the homework machine. Because the machine, code-named Belch, is doing their homework for them, they start spending a lot of time together, attracting a lot of attention. And attention is exactly what you don't want when you are keeping a secret. Before long, things start to get out of control, and Belch becomes much more powerful than they ever imagined. Now the kids are in a race against their own creation, and the loser could end up in jail...or worse!

Customer Reviews

This was a great book to read

New Book (SPOILER ALERT)

Return of the HW machine was a great sequel, and at the end, the four blast the computer chip in the HW machine into space. I think there should be a third book called “Revenge of the Homework Machine”. I have been thinking of this book since I first read three years ago, and it would be a dream come true if it did happen

Can't wait to read book 2!

"I think that the homework machine by Dan Gutman is a really good and enjoyable book filled with Humor, Feelings, Mystery, and Life-Lessons. Give it a try! I rate 5 stars!!! :) ;) :D

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The Homework Machine

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Description

Sam dawkins, grade 5.

The police lady says me and Brenton and Judy and Kelsey have to each come in separately and talk about what happened.

Okay, so here goes. Is this thing on? My name is Sam Dawkins, but everybody calls me Snikwad on account of that’s my last name spelled backward. Dawkins. Snikwad. Get it? Most kids call me “Snik.” It’s kinda cool. Beats having a nickname like Booger Face or Fart Boy or something stupid like that.

I was new to the school. I didn’t know anything. And I didn’t get kicked out of my old school because I refused to get a haircut. That’s a lie. I don’t know how that rumor got started. I don’t care if you believe me. That’s the truth. Anyway, my parents moved here from Oregon. My dad was in the air force and that’s why we moved to Arizona. He was assigned to Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix.

The bottom line is, we messed up. Stuff happens. We’re not perfect. We all feel bad. We won’t do it again. What are you gonna do, throw us in jail? That’s my statement.

What, you need more than that? Details? Okay, okay. What do you want to know?

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

My name is Kelsey Donnelly. I really don’t see the reason why we gotta do this. The police lady told me that I have to make a “statement” in private and tell the whole story of what happened from the very beginning in September. Like I’m a creep or something! I barely remember what happened last week. Forget about way back in September.

Look, we’re sorry about what happened. We were just having a little fun and it got out of hand. It’s not like we robbed a bank or anything. That’s my statement. I can’t believe I have to spend my summer in this room with a tape recorder when I could be out having fun. Can I go now?

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

My name is Judy Douglas. My mom works at home and my dad works for the National Park Service. He cuts down dead trees and does controlled burns to prevent forest fires.

The whole thing started because certain people who shall remain nameless did some thoughtless things that I don’t need to discuss here.

This is so unfair. I have almost straight A’s and I’m in the G&T program. That’s gifted and talented. I would never break the law or do anything dishonest. Things just got out of control. The next thing we knew, we had to go talk to the police.

Do you have any idea of how humiliating this entire ordeal has been for me? Do you know how upset my parents were when they found out? And now this is going to be on my permanent record, probably for the rest of my life. If this keeps me out of law school someday, I will be so angry.

I’ll sue. That’s what I’ll do. Well, if I get into law school I’ll sue. But if I get into law school I won’t need to sue. Oh, I just wish I could go to sleep and wake up and find out it was all a dream. Like it never happened.

My first reaction was that it was discrimination. We are one of the few African-American families living in this area. When something bad happens to Judy, I can’t help but wonder if it is bigotry at work. But I looked into it, and that wasn’t the case. She and the others just did a dumb thing and they got caught. It’s as simple as that. And now they’re going to have to pay for it.

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI, GRADE 5

It’s interesting how things happen sometimes. If I line up ten dominoes and I push over the first one, the others will fall one by one. But if I leave the first one alone, the other dominoes remain standing.

Life is like that. The way your life plays out depends on which dominoes you choose to push over and which ones you leave alone. In this case, we pushed over the wrong domino. Can I get a drink of water or something?

MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

I was so excited, walking into my very own classroom for the first time in September. I had been a student teacher in Ohio, and I was hoping to get a job somewhere in the west, preferably near a national park. I’ve always been a nature lover, and I wanted to share this with young people. When I got an offer to teach fifth grade at the Grand Canyon School, well, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

The Grand Canyon! I had never even been here before. Just think! Over the course of four billion years, the Colorado River slowly sliced this gash into the Earth. I spent hours exploring it when I moved here, and took lots of pictures of the layers of rock. The Grand Canyon is like a sculpture, created by nature. I was in awe.

When I walked into Miss Rasmussen’s class on the first day of school, the first thing that struck me was that she was so young ! I mean, she looked like she could have been one of the students. I liked that, because I figured she would be really enthusiastic about everything. Some of the older teachers who have been teaching all their lives don’t get too excited about anything anymore.

On the other hand, I was afraid Miss Rasmussen might not be experienced enough to handle some of the boys, who can be a problem sometimes.

So I walk into Miss Rasmussen’s class on the first day of school in September and I’m the new kid, so I’m a little nervous and I don’t want everybody looking at me, but they’re all looking at me anyway because, well, I’m the new kid and everybody wants to check out the new kid.

I scope out the scene and it’s obvious who the cool kids are, who the dumb kids are, who the smart kids are, and who the dorks are. I could tell in a minute. The class had the usual number of clueless dweebs, pre–jock idiots, losers, brownnosers, and bullies, just like my old school.

But the one kid who stood out was Brenton. You just knew the first time you set eyes on him that there was something different about this kid.

Brenton would dress funny, with these stiff long pants no matter how hot it was. He always wore a button-down shirt and sometimes he would even wear a tie to school. Can you imagine? I guess his mom made him dress that way. I hope so, anyway. I can’t imagine a boy wearing a tie to school on his own. He was actually pretty good-looking, but he combed his hair in a really weird way. Like he parted it on the wrong side or something.

Once I suggested to him that he would look better if he combed his hair the other way. He just looked at me like I was crazy. Like it hadn’t even occurred to him that you could change your personal appearance to look better. Or that it would matter. He probably had so many more important things on his mind that he couldn’t be bothered with something as trivial as combing his hair.

Some of the other kids would make fun of him behind his back. Sometimes in front of his back. He didn’t have any friends. Nobody seemed to know what to make of him.

Brenton just came out and said the weirdest stuff. Like one time he comes up to me and asks me if I know what they made glass out of. I say no and he says they make glass out of sand. I say that’s interesting, even though I really don’t think it’s all that interesting. Then he gets that look in his eyes and he says they take sand and make it into glass. He says he figures that if they can turn sand into glass, just about anything is possible. I’m telling you, the guy is different.

Brenton was a genius when it came to school and stuff, but he was real stupid when it came to other stuff. I remember one time this reality TV show was hot and everybody was talking about it. I mean everybody . And we were all at recess talking about it and Brenton comes out and says something like, “I never heard of that show.” We all just looked at him. It was like not knowing the sun was in the sky. And they say I’m dumb!

That’s just the way Brenton is. He doesn’t know or care about the stuff that normal people care about. We all thought he was a dork. Well, probably Judy didn’t, ’cause she’s a genius too.

Most kids at least try to act cool in some way. You know, like they’ll get T-shirts with cool logos on them or they’ll get a cool bike or listen to cool music. They may not be cool themselves, but they make themselves cool by having cool stuff or hanging around with cool people. But Brenton, he didn’t even make the effort.

What does “cool” mean, anyway? Did you know that Abraham Lincoln once said “That is cool”? It’s true. I looked it up. He said it in his famous Cooper Union speech. Google it if you don’t believe me.

I feel that a person can change himself or herself no more than a giraffe can decide it doesn’t like having a long neck. It would be easy enough to buy the latest clothes and watch the hot new TV shows and surround myself with cool things. But that wouldn’t make me cool. Nothing will ever make me cool. Some people are simply destined not to be cool. And I’m cool with that.

If everybody was cool, everybody would be the same. Nobody would be cooler than anyone else. There would be nobody to make fun of. So I suppose I serve a purpose, in a weird way.

Our claim to fame at the Grand Canyon School is that we are the closest school to the Grand Canyon. We’re about a half a mile from the South Rim. If you’ve ever been to the canyon, our school is south of El Tovar and near Bright Angel. We go all the way from kindergarten to twelfth grade, and I believe we have the only high school that is in a national park.

By September, most of the tourists have gone back to work and school. It gets pretty quiet around here. But it’s nice in a way, because we have the canyon to ourselves. We’ve got a lot of great teachers, nice parents, and good kids here. But sometimes, I guess, good kids do bad things.

Somebody told me that the human brain isn’t fully formed until we’re about twenty years old. That’s why kids do dumb things sometimes. And that’s why we’re not allowed to vote and drink and stuff. So can you really blame us for the dumb thing we did? I don’t think so. Our brains aren’t fully formed yet.

Some teachers like to have the desks arranged in perfect columns and rows. In graduate school, one of my professors told me that the children learn better when they work in small groups. I divided the class into six groups of four kids, and we pushed the desks together in those groups.

I had no big plan to put Brenton, Kelsey, Judy, and Sam together. I did it alphabetically. All their last names started with D. We called them the D Squad.

Every child is unique, of course. It’s necessary to treat them as individuals. Just like me, Sam was new to this area, and he had some initial problems adjusting to the curriculum and the other students. Judy seemed very studious from the start, and I could tell that it was very important for her to be a high achiever. Kelsey was the opposite. She didn’t appear to like school very much. And Brenton, well, Brenton was . . . different.

It makes no difference to me where I sit. I’ll get the same information whether I’m sitting on one side of the room or the other. I don’t ordinarily strike up friendships with my classmates. Snik, Judy, and Kelsey pretty much ignored me, and I ignored them. At least in September. It was fine.

BRENTON’S MOM

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The Homework Machine

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Upper Elementary & Junior High Plus

When fifth grade genius Brenton invents a machine to do his homework for him, his deskmates-Snik, the class clown; Judy, the teacher’s pet; and Kelsey, slacker extraordinaire-want in on the action. The unlikely foursome eventually become friends, but what happens when the secret is too big for one of them to keep?

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Fifth-grader Brenton is a computer genius, but the other three members of his work group think he's a nerd. So, when he tells them that he has invented a machine that does homework, they taunt him until he agrees to demonstrate. The machine actually works, and Kelsey, Sam, and Judy convince him to let them use it. At first, they are delighted with their freedom, but things quickly get out of hand. Their teacher is suspicious of the suddenly errorless work, and other friends resent the time that they spend together. The dynamics within the group are stressful as well. Judy, a talented student, feels guilty about cheating, but is pressured to excel. Kelsey is concerned that her friends will shun her for associating with "nerds," but her improved grades earn privileges at home. Wisecracking Sam makes fun of Brenton but needs his help in playing chess by mail with his dad, who is serving in Iraq. The children gradually begin to bond, especially after Sam's father is killed in combat. Eventually, their secret causes conflict with the law. The story is told entirely through short excerpts from police interviews. This device shows the developing relationships through the kids' own observations. There are touches of humor in the way the four classmates talk about themselves and one another. Ominous hints about the legal trouble maintain tension throughout the story, but its exact nature isn't revealed until near the end. A dramatic and thought-provoking story with a strong message about honesty and friendship. Elaine E. Knight, Lincoln Elementary Schools, IL

When Brenton, a decidedly uncool fifth grader, programs his computer to do his homework, three other students happily use the program, too. The burden of keeping the machine secret, however, weighs heavily on this improbable group of friends. Although the story is enjoyable, the format--snippets from the police report as each child explains what happened--isn't always convincing.

Clean Books,Chapter Books/Novels,Fiction,Reluctant Readers,Transitional Readers,Realistic Fiction

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• New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2006], ©2006

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Table of Contents

About the book, about the author.

Dan Gutman hated to read when he was a kid. Then he grew up. Now he writes cool books like The Kid Who Ran for President ; Honus & Me ; The Million Dollar Shot ; Race for the Sky ; and The Edison Mystery: Qwerty Stevens, Back in Time . If you want to learn more about Dan or his books, stop by his website at DanGutman.com.

Product Details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (June 26, 2007)
• Length: 176 pages
• ISBN13: 9780689876790
• Grades: 3 - 7
• Ages: 8 - 12
• Fountas & Pinnell™ R These books have been officially leveled by using the F&P Text Level Gradient™ Leveling System

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• Children's Fiction > Social Themes > Adolescence & Coming of Age
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The Homework Machine Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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When four unlikely friends become dependent on this marvelous device, they'll soon learn that cheating always has its consequences - including legal trouble. No matter what happens, their best bet is to stick together.

• Listening Length 3 hours and 7 minutes
• Author Dan Gutman
• Narrator Cherise Boothe, see all
• Audible release date March 17, 2008
• Language English
• Publisher Recorded Books
• ASIN B00166CBEU
• Version Unabridged
• Program Type Audiobook
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The Homework Machine: The Homework Machine

We offer many activity ideas for supporting books of this type here .

You can also create your own word search, criss cross or memory match puzzle using our puzzle maker tool .

Finally, for a searchable collection of thematic leveled reading passages, click here.

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THE HOMEWORK MACHINE

by Dan Gutman ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

When fifth-graders Judy, Sam and Kelsey discover their classmate Brenton Damagatchi’s homework machine, they think they are on to a good thing and begin to visit him regularly after school. Alphabetically seated at the same table, the brilliant Asian-American computer geek, hardworking, high-achieving African-American girl, troubled army brat and ditzy girl with pink hair would seem to have nothing in common. (They would also seem to be stereotypes, but young readers won’t mind.) But they share an aversion to the time-consuming grind of after-school work. Their use of the machine doesn’t lead to learning—as a surprise spring quiz demonstrates—but it does lead to new friendships and new interests. The events of their year are told chronologically in individual depositions to the police. In spite of the numerous voices, the story is easy to follow, and the change in Sam, especially, is clear, as he discovers talents beyond coolness thanks to a new interest in chess. Middle-grade readers may find one part of this story upsettingly realistic and the clearly stated moral not what they had hoped to hear, but the generally humorous approach will make the lesson go down easily. (Fiction. 8-11)

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-689-87678-5

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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More by Dan Gutman

BOOK REVIEW

by Dan Gutman ; illustrated by Allison Steinfeld

by Dan Gutman

TUCK EVERLASTING

by Natalie Babbitt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1975

However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...

At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever. 

Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it. 

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975

ISBN: 0312369816

Page Count: 164

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

More by Natalie Babbitt

by Natalie Babbitt

by Valerie Worth & illustrated by Natalie Babbitt

by Paul Fleischman & illustrated by Judy Pedersen ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 1997

Using the multiple voices that made Bull Run (1995) so absorbing, Fleischman takes readers to a modern inner-city neighborhood and a different sort of battle, as bit by bit the handful of lima beans an immigrant child plants in an empty lot blossoms into a community garden, tended by a notably diverse group of local residents. It's not an easy victory: Toughened by the experience of putting her children through public school, Leona spends several days relentlessly bulling her way into government offices to get the lot's trash hauled away; others address the lack of readily available water, as well as problems with vandals and midnight dumpers; and though decades of waging peace on a small scale have made Sam an expert diplomat, he's unable to prevent racial and ethnic borders from forming. Still, the garden becomes a place where wounds heal, friendships form, and seeds of change are sown. Readers won't gain any great appreciation for the art and science of gardening from this, but they may come away understanding that people can work side by side despite vastly different motives, attitudes, skills, and cultural backgrounds. It's a worthy idea, accompanied by Pedersen's chapter-heading black-and-white portraits, providing advance information about the participants' races and, here and there, ages. (Fiction. 9-11)

Pub Date: May 11, 1997

ISBN: 0-06-027471-9

Page Count: 69

Publisher: HarperCollins

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997

More by Paul Fleischman

by Paul Fleischman ; illustrated by Melissa Sweet

by Paul Fleischman

by Paul Fleischman ; illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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The Homework Machine

Starting with a stern statement from the Grand Canyon, Arizona Police Chief Rebecca Fish, meet four fifth graders in big trouble. There's long-haired, rebellious, cool guy Sam Dawkins; fun-loving, unacademic, pink-haired Kelsey Donnelly, African American grind Judy Douglas, and friendless genius Brenton Damagatchi. The whole thing starts because Sam is anti-homework, especially the daily fill in-the-blank worksheets his first-year teacher Miss Rasmussen hands out. Sam is skeptical when Brenton claims he has programmed his computer to search the web and do all his homework each day, but it’s true. Soon the four seatmates are spending every afternoon in Brenton’s bedroom, printing out their daily assignments on the computer they nickname Belch. It can’t do any harm, right? The chronology and confession of their ill-fated escapade is related entirely through a series of transcripts, narrated by the four contrite kids, their parents, classmates, and Miss Rasmussen.

There are many interesting threads explored in this nimble story: keeping secrets, making friends, being popular, the morality of taking the easy way out, first crushes, the meaning of war, and even the loss of a parent. The setting of the Grand Canyon and sub-themes about playing chess, starting fads, and using a catapult will get kids looking up supporting information in books and on the Internet. Questions readers can think about as they read include: Which of the four main characters is most like or unlike you and why? Which one would or would not be your friend and why?

Reviewed by : JF.

Themes : DEATH. FRIENDSHIP. GRIEF. HUMOR.

Also Available From:

CRITICS HAVE SAID

• “A dramatic and thought-provoking story with a strong message about honesty and friendship.” – Elaine E. Knight, School Library Journal
• “Booktalkers will find this a natural, particularly for those hard-to-tempt readers whose preferred method of computer disposal involves a catapult and the Grand Canyon.” – Carolyn Phelan, Booklist
• “Tucked in between the laughs are excellent messages about tolerance, honesty, and the importance of what the students’ teacher calls the “homework machine [that] already exists. It’s called your brain.” – Child Magazine
• “Short chapters of alternating voices tell the story, which is funny in some places, but is not without intense and sometimes sad moments.” – Susie Wilde, Children

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• Clements, Andrew. Frindle. Simon & Schuster, 1996. ISBN-13: 9780689818769
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• Clements, Andrew. No Talking. Simon & Schuster, 2007. ISBN-13: 9781416909835
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• Fletcher, Ralph. Flying Solo. Clarion, 1998. ISBN-13: 9780395873236
• Gutman, Dan. The Get Rich Quick Club. HarperCollins, 2004. ISBN-13: 9780060534424
• Gutman, Dan. The Kid Who Ran for President. Scholastic, 1996. ISBN-13: 9780590939881
• Gutman, Dan. Qwerty Stevens Back in Time: The Edison Mystery. Simon & Schuster, 2001. ISBN-13: 9780590939881
• Park, Barbara. Maxie, Rosie, and Earl—Partners in Grime. Knopf, 1990. ISBN-13: 9780679806431
• Pearsall, Shelley. All of the Above. Little, Brown, 2006. ISBN-13: 9780316115261
• Rocklin, Joanne. For Your Eyes Only! Scholastic, 1997. ISBN-13: 9780142003220
• Sachar, Louis. Sideways Stories from Wayside School. Morrow, 1978. ISBN-13: 9780380698714

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