Jake Drake 2 – Know-It-All

Andrew Clements's Jake Drake 2 - Know-It-All is a school story for 8 year olds told by a boy who wants a science-fair prize so badly it turns him into someone he doesn't much like.

Jake gets his defence in early. He explains, before anything else happens, that he has loved computers since before he could read, starting on an old Mac with a black-and-white screen. He says he's telling you this so the rest of the story doesn't make him look like a jerk.

That's a promising way to start a book.

The problem is Kevin Young and Marsha McCall. They were fine in the reception year, when school was mostly playing. Then came the year of right answers and wrong answers, and both of them went for it. Marsha shakes all over and whisper-shouts "Ooh, ooh! I know!" Kevin's arm hauls him half out of his chair.

Jake is very clear-eyed about why it got that bad. Their first teacher liked it. She lined up whoever finished first. She called on the fast ones and frowned at the slow ones.

Then a man in a yellow sports coat and a purple tie with green spots turns up at assembly. His computer shop is sponsoring a science fair, the first one the school has ever run, and he holds his banner up the wrong way round.

The prize is the exact computer Jake has been begging his parents for. He has seen it on every channel and on the side of a bus.

So Jake decides to win. And to keep the whole thing secret from Kevin and Marsha, which he and his best friend Willie both find delicious.

What makes this good is how honest the narrator is about wanting to beat people. Jake knows it isn't his best self. He tells you anyway, in short sentences, with jokes, and with a boy's proper attention to what his teacher's trousers are doing.

It's American, so it's fourth grade, recess and a Mom, and the science is real enough that your reader may want a battery and some wire afterwards.

If they like this narrator, there's another book in the library in the same voice, Bully Buster, which goes back to what Jake learned about bullies from the age of three at Miss Lulu's Dainty Diaper Day Care Center.