This book helps me a ton to recall the books we instructors like to apportion for optional school understudies to scrutinize over their late spring get-aways - books about youngsters adjusting gigantic "life lessons" before they take off for school. An appalling package of the dialog in this book examines just as it has been made to be used as a piece of understudy articles. People just don't talk thusly, not even really sharp people who read an impressive measure. At one point, truly right on time in the novel, Cassidy refers to Mary Oliver in her push to get poor deplorable Ezra out of his hang: "Let me know, what is it you plan to do/With your one wild and important life?" It's a not too bad question, and one Ezra would do well to consider. On the other hand, a conclusive fiasco (you knew there would be a `ultimate disaster,' didn't you?) is that Cassidy won't listen to her own particular suggestion. As Ezra finally recognizes, Cassidy IS the calamity. Former, I said that I really appreciated Toby, Ezra's past seventh grade buddy who twisted up some part of the practical discourse gathering and sitting at the nerd's table in the cafeteria. Toby is sharp and engrossing and a better sidekick than Ezra than Ezra ever was to him. Regardless, he's not my most cherished character in this novel. My most adored character is Cooper, a 14-year-old standard poodle who values Ezra in a way that is more significant than either Cassidy or his watchmen. Cooper is an eminent, lovable character whose eyes reveal a significance of feeling and seeing every now and then found in anyone, human or canine. Taking all things into account, what Schneider does with Cooper's character toward the end of this book is the thing that will visit me everlastingly, a thing more ghastly even than that over the top and insane chance I determined. I can pardon Schneider for the occurrence (this is fiction, things being what they are) and for all misrepresented "demonstrating minutes," yet I can't overlook her for Coope