Mr. Terupt Falls Again

Rob Buyea's Mr. Terupt Falls Again is a school story for 11 year olds about seven friends who get a second year with the teacher they love.

What happens

The gang are going into sixth grade, and Mr Terupt is moving up with them. They spend the summer helping him lug boxes down to the new classroom. Peter crams one so full the bottom falls out. Then he tries carrying a tower of books. (You can guess how that goes.)

Underneath the jokes, everyone is carrying something. Peter's parents want to send him off to boarding school next year, so he makes a plan to fail sixth grade on purpose. Jeffrey's home has gone very quiet since his brother died. Danielle spots a stranger walking across the family farm, and the grown-ups go silent when she walks into the kitchen.

And Peter still can't stop thinking about something that happened in the snow last winter. If your reader hasn't met this class yet, Because of Mr. Terupt is the place to start, because this book takes what happened there for granted.

It's told in turns again, and the voices are such fun. Jessica has been to writing camp, so her chapters come as film scripts, with FADE IN and camera shots. Luke signs off his chapters as Detective Luke with a list of questions. Lexie says "like" in every other sentence.

Then the first week of school delivers a shock. Jeffrey finds a baby in a shoebox by the side of the road and carries him all the way to school.

This one goes to some grown-up places. Lexie, in sixth grade, starts hanging out at an empty house with some high-school girls and smoking with them. The abandoned baby is upsetting for the whole class. There's a brother's death in the past, parents who barely speak to each other and a mum who hardly leaves the house. Add in fart jokes, a boy whacked in the privates and a joke about periods.

It reads at the very top of the shelf. For a reader that age who loved the first year with Mr Terupt, it's funny, tender and very easy to care about. A more sensitive child might do better to wait a little.

What to read next

If they like stories where a group of friends take turns and each one is hiding something, try Gordon Korman's The Fort. Five boys find an old bomb shelter in the woods after a hurricane, and the secrets come down the ladder with them.