The Losers Club

There's a pattern we've come to expect from Clements's middle-grade novels (beginning with Frindle, rev. 11/96): a kid gets a big idea and sees it through to results neither he (usually he) nor readers expect. Here, all sixth-grader Alec wants to do is read. When forced by the afterschool program to join or create a club, he comes up with the Losers Club, whose name he feels will sufficiently put off any intruders into his dream of solitary reading bliss. But there's a catch: the rules require him to sign up at least one other person. He does, and as the club slowly increases its members--who sign on for reasons both worthy and calculating--Alec finds his expectations of the club and himself changing. The story easily works in themes of friends becoming former friends; friends becoming more than friends (in the most innocent of ways); bullying and teasing; and how reading is the best thing ever. Clements appends the fifty-odd short stories, books, and series Alec and his friends enthusiastically read and share throughout the novel; it is to the author's credit that his own story makes all those titles (a catholic list, but Hatchet is first in Alec's heart) seem like great fun indeed. roger sutton