A hilarious new middle grade novel from beloved and bestselling author Gordon Korman about what happens when the worst class of kids in school is paired with the worst teacher—perfect for fans of Ms. Bixby’s Last Day. A good choice for summer reading or anytime! The Unteachables are a notorious class of misfits, delinquents, and academic train wrecks. Like Aldo, with anger management issues; … Aldo, with anger management issues; Parker, who can’t read; Kiana, who doesn’t even belong in the class—or any class; and Elaine (rhymes with pain). The Unteachables have been removed from the student body and isolated in room 117.
Their teacher is Mr. Zachary Kermit, the most burned-out teacher in all of Greenwich. He was once a rising star, but his career was shattered by a cheating scandal that still haunts him. After years of phoning it in, he is finally one year away from early retirement. But the superintendent has his own plans to torpedo that idea—and it involves assigning Mr. Kermit to the Unteachables.
The Unteachables never thought they’d find a teacher who had a worse attitude than they did. And Mr. Kermit never thought he would actually care about teaching again. Over the course of a school year, though, room 117 will experience mayhem, destruction—and maybe even a shot at redemption.
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The Unteachables is about a class of seven eighth-graders in the Self-Contained Special (SCS) class at Greenwich Middle School. The SCS class is widely known among both students and teachers as “the unteachables,” kids who teachers just can’t reach and shouldn’t even bother. This year, they’re being taught by Mr. Kermit, a once brilliant and inspiring teacher who quit caring after he was unfairly blamed for a cheating scandal on a national exam in his class twenty-seven years before. If he can just make it to the end of the year, he’ll be able to take early retirement. He’s the only teacher at the school more apathetic than the students.
This is not the first book by Gordon Korman I’ve read and reviewed-I’ve also reviewed Ungifted and Re-Start. Korman’s books specialize in middle school kids others see as bad or unredeemable who’ve somehow been given a second chance. It’s amazing how much he works this vein without it turning into a formula–the characters always feel real, and the situations fresh. The books are also hilarious. Korman uses something I think of as “plausible ridiculousness.” That is, there are scenes where the characters are just being themselves and doing things that make sense for them, but somehow add up to really ludicrous situations.
An example in The Unteachables is near the beginning, when Mr. Kermit and his class have their first breakthrough. Mr. Kermit hates spirit week because at Greenwich Middle School, every student is issued a vuvuzela to blow and the hallways between class periods become unbearably loud. Mr. Kermit happened to stick up for injured athlete Barnstorm Anderson earlier in the week, convincing his football coach to let him take part in a pep rally with the rest of the football team, so when Barnstorm notices the boxes of vuvuzelas unattended on the loading dock, he has an idea for how he can repay Mr. Kermit. He gets classmate Parker Elias, who has a driver’s license at age fourteen because he has to help with his family’s farm, to bring his truck over, and all the SCS students load the boxes up so they can go throw them in the Greenwich River. Of course, this results in a scene with the students, Mr. Kermit, and the principal and several other teachers at the river, with Mr. Kermit somehow falling in, and his students jumping after him to save him.
My guess is that Korman’s books are not considered “realistic fiction” because of scenes like that, but why does realistic fiction always have to be about kids with drug addictions or teen pregnancy or whatever? Don’t funny things ever happen in real life? Actually, the kids in Korman’s class have plenty of problems, it’s just played for laughs. Mateo sleeps all the time because his dad’s rock band practices in their garage until late every night. Aldo has an anger management problem. Kiana’s not even supposed to be in the class–she was placed there in an administrative mix-up on the first day of school, but because she’s only in town for a couple months, living with her dad and step-mom until her mother finishes shooting a movie and she can move back to L.A., she decides SCS is as good a place as any for a short-timer. It’s not like Mr. Kermit assigns homework.
It’s no surprise that somehow Mr. Kermit eventually manages to get through to his students, or that they eventually inspire him to become the teacher he once was. The delight of a Korman book is the humorous way we get there. I think this one was a couple steps below Re-Start, which I found to be a really special book, but this is about at the level of Ungifted. It’s a great book for middle schoolers, and any parent who picks it up will be rewarded with lots of laugh-out-loud moments and a satisfying ending.
Hooked me early! Wonderfully engaging characters and very moving in spots. A fun, uplifting read.
This is a amazing book! Love to read it over and over
This book had a little bit of a Mr. Terupt feel to it, if you’ve ever read that one. I liked that one better, and it’s by a different author, but this one was also very good. Fun and funny characters, a bit of heartbreak and disappointment, some antics and chuckles and “I know! Exactly!” thoughts about school and education and just…life and people and systems. Anyone could enjoy this book, I would think, and it would make a good read-aloud for a teacher, librarian or parent, or again, yep, anyone. The ending was satisfying and the beginning draws you right in. It’s like exactly the right length and spends the perfect amount of time on each of the parts of the journey. I liked the different characters taking turns telling things from their point of view, and it didn’t have repeats or overlaps among the points of views either, so that was nice.