Review: Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life, by James Patterson and Chris Tebbetts

James Patterson's and Chris Tebbetts' Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life is a lot like Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Both rely heavily on drawings to enhance the story, though the drawings by Laura Park are much more detailed and sometimes require more attention from the reader. Both are written in the first person point of view, but where Greg Heffley writes in a diary, Rafe Khatchadorian does not. Rafe also has a lot more personality. Jeff Kinney uses a much more objective narrative point of view, but Patterson and Tebbetts give their narrator much more energy and zeal. Both stories are humorous, at times laugh out loud funny, but, oddly, while reading Rafe's story, I felt a tinge of sorrow for the main character. Patterson and Tebbetts are able to bring out the energetic personality of a middle school boy while showing how alienating it can be to learn how to conform to the rules of an institution, especially while you have other things bothering you.

The general premise of the story is simple - Rafe is starting middle school and to make things interesting he decides to challenge himself to break every single rule in the school's code of conduct. This is something young readers will cheer as brilliant while their parents and school officials will likely cringe. But young readers should be able to distinguish fantasy from reality. They may dream of pulling the fire alarm, for example, like Rafe does, but that doesn't mean they will follow his example and actually do it. Rafe does not like school, something many students probably agree with. Not all students dislike school, of course. There are those like Jeanne, who fit right in. But many are just like Rafe. This is a difficult time for youngsters still figuring themselves and the world out. And here adults are often setting rigid rules, those of the zero tolerance variety, that make a person like Rafe feel like he could never fit in emotionally.

It doesn't help that Rafe has some family troubles. His mother is divorced and she's currently engaged to a lazy man who Rafe calls Bear. I've seen reviews that criticize this choice of arrangement in the story, but stories often reflect reality. While Rafe's mother probably shouldn't be with a man like Bear, especially since she has a son and daughter to care for and his presence is more burden than help, in reality people are human and often make poor decisions for emotional reasons, even adults. Bear is sometimes portrayed stereotypically, sometimes more realistically. There's also Leo, Rafe's best friend, who has a couple of surprises up his sleeve. I didn't foresee the revelations with Leo, but a more discerning reader may be less surprised than I was. They do add immensely to the emotional impact of the story.

This is an energetic, sometimes manic, often inventive story that never grows dull, thanks to Rafe's high energy narration. There is a lot of humor. Rafe is the kind of kid who a teacher might simultaneously feel annoyed with and amused by, such as when he writes his own parts for Paris while reading lines for Romeo and Juliet. Fellow students, however, love a class clown like Rafe. People often appreciate a person who dares to do what they would not. The drawings are excellent as well. The attention to detail is surprising, and you'll find some things to laugh at if you pay attention to the small details. The drawing where Rafe is shown sneaking into the teacher lounge and taking a bite out of each donut had me cracking up, even if I would be enraged to find a student had done that in my own teacher lounge.

If anything, Middle School is an exercise in hyperbole. The story is loaded with it. The title should clue you into that - The Worst Years of My Life. The drawings add a lot to this hyperbole, especially the hilarious portrayals of classrooms. In one drawing, the Spanish teacher is shown spearing students with arrows for not following rules. This hyperbole often turns to metaphor. We see this with the portrayal of one teacher, Ms. Donatello, as a dragon. But this metaphor grows more challenging in a few chapters when Rafe narrates a detention or meeting with the principal as an epic battle between Rafe the knight and a monster. This is much more revealing of Rafe, who copes with his troubles by turning them into fantasy.

While Rafe's rule breaking is rewarded with laughs, it is not rewarded with an easy school experience for him. So while some may criticize the book for giving students ideas and making it seem like breaking rules and complaining about school as boring are appropriate reactions, Patterson and Tebbetts just know how to pander to their target audience. Young readers may rejoice in knowing there isn't a large lesson for those like Rafe, such as that breaking rules is wrong. His behavior does make his schooling experience more difficult, to be sure, but Patterson and Tebbetts are merely tapping into the effects that unbending, rigid rules have on young human beings. Zero tolerance rules have become a problem when enforced on well-meaning kids who incidentally break a rule. This is made most clear when Jeanne is punished for breaking a rule that she broke not out of meanness, but to help another person.

What really surprised me about the book, and maybe my reaction isn't shared by everyone, is the underlying tone of melancholy I felt. Except for Leo, Rafe is a loner. Nobody really understands him, and nobody makes any real attempt to connect with him. His mom comes the closest to showing understanding, but her feelings sometimes come out as an alienating sort of pity. Then there's Jeanne, who starts to be nice to Rafe, perhaps oblivious to the fact he has a crush on her. The scene when he asks her if she wants to have pizza with him, after he goes out of his way to please her, made me feel sad. She nicely tells him that he misunderstood, that she doesn't feel that way about him. But the fact that she was just being nice to him makes him feel used. Again and again through the story, as Rafe makes us laugh with his inventive ways to break rules, there's also a sadness lingering there. That's what elevates this book and makes it much more complicated than it seems. I was surprised to find how powerful the stronger moments of this book were, and how funny the rest of it was.