Twerp by Mark Goldblatt

by:  Mark Goldblatt
published by:  Random House Books for Young Readers
publish date:  January 1, 2013

Julian Twerski isn't a bully. He's just made a big mistake. So when he returns to school after a weeklong suspension, his English teacher offers him a deal: if he keeps a journal and writes about the terrible incident that got him and his friends suspended, he can get out of writing a report on Shakespeare. Julian jumps at the chance. And so begins his account of life in sixth grade--blowing up homemade fireworks, writing a love letter for his best friend (with disastrous results), and worrying whether he's still the fastest kid in school. Lurking in the background, though, is the one story he can't bring himself to tell, the one story his teacher most wants to hear.

I had this book for quite awhile and I started and stopped it a couple of times before I finally sat down with it.   Once I finally got going with it, I was aggravated with myself for taking so long, because this book was really good!

Twerp is Julian's accounting of sixth grade life.  Most of it is pretty hilarious.  His gang of boys get up to all kinds of crazy shenanigans.  Julian tells about all these escapades in great detail.  However, underneath all the humor is the pain of the one terrible incident.   He eventually outlines what happened to get him suspended and how terrible he feels about it.  

Twerp is probably one of the best middle grade books I've read in a long time.  I would definitely recommend it to anyone!  I could see young and old readers alike enjoying this book.  The whole time I was thinking I could so see this book being made into a movie.  It made me think of a mashup of Lost in Yonkers, Stand By Me and Diary of A Wimpy Kid.