George and Lilly have been best friends forever.  They have also looked forward to competing side by side in their school’s Spirit Week: a special week-long competition reserved only for the fifth grade.  But through a twist of fate they end up being captains of opposing teams with competitive feelings and foul play threating to ruin not only Spirit Week but their friendship as well.

Unschooled by Allan Woodrow is a fast, fun tale of friendship and fair play.  Each chapter switches between the viewpoints of our two protagonists, George and Lilly.  Doing this gives the reader not only a chance to get to know and like each character well but the author uses it as the perfect mechanism for illustrating that there are two sides to every conflict.  Full of humorous accidents, hilarious high-jinx, and plenty of misunderstandings Unschooled is a beautiful lesson in sportsman ship cloaked in comedy. 

This book was sent to Compass Book Ratings for review by Scholastic Press (A Scholastic Imprint)

Content Analysis:

Profanity/Language:  None

Violence/Gore:  Girl steps on other girl’s foot; character breaks arm; girl trips a few times; character has food dumped on him; many pranks (slime dumped in lockers, food dropped on students, etc.); boy slaps other boy on back; children throw water balloons filled with pudding; reference to student possibly being eaten; boys shove other boys; many outlandish ideas on how competitions can be sabotaged; class pets stolen and mildly vandalized; girl offers to throw banana peel at boys feet; character runs into table; reference to boy’s broken foot; characters slip and fall.

Sex/Nudity:  Boy and girl squeeze each other’s shoulders.

Mature Subject Matter:

Sportsmanship, cheating, friendship, peer pressure.

Alcohol / Drug Use:

None