With school soon to start, Lewis Blake, the main character
in Eric Gansworth’s If I Ever Get Out of
Here, decides to do something drastic and take another shot at making
friends. As the only kid from the Tuscarora Indian Reservation in the brainiacs
track at school, Lewis had spent the past six years not fitting in with the
other kids. His solution is to chop off his braid and to hide the fact that he
is on the free lunch program. Of course, it’s not that simple, the school bully
starts torturing him, his classmates still ignore him and if anything he is on
a downward spiral until he meets the new kid. They were an unlikely pair,
George a middle class kid from an Air Force family and Lewis the poor kid from
the reservation who bonded over a shared love of the Beatle’s music.
The author
paints a very realistic and likable story of two kids who stretched both cultural
and economic boundaries to become friends.
For grades 6-8.
