The Life and Times of Benny Alvarez

Reviewed by: Karen Sandlin Silverman - Scarborough High School, Scarborough, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: February 22, 2015

Review

A sweet middle school story about Benny, his family, and a boys vs. girls poetry-writing contest. Benny's Mom gently chides him for being negative but Benny has a lot on his mind: his grandfather is recovering from a stroke, his younger brother is emotionally sensitive, and he has a love/hate relationship with classmate/poetry combatant Claudine. Benny and his friends play word games based on a thesaurus ("the book") and form a "Word Warriors" club. As sweet and clever as this book is, I do have a librarian's quibble: I don't like that it seemed perfectly ok for Benny's mom to complain about a book in the school library and have it removed.

Overall Book Score: very good