conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide a description for a book titled Adam Canfield of the Slash about Grade, I>New, York with the genre: Children's Books, Growing Up & Facts of Life.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Grade 5-8&ndash;the author has tapped on his experiences reporting on education issues for the <I>New York Times</I> to fashion this excellent novel. Adam is the reluctant new coeditor of the <I>Slash</I>, his affluent suburb's "award-winning" elementary/middle school newspaper. While he has a precocious penchant for investigative reporting, he's decidedly less adept in the interpersonal arena and finds he has much to learn from his more poised partner, Jennifer, about meeting the subtler demands of the job. Among them is the matter of how to supervise Phoebe, a pesky third-grade cub reporter who, though annoyingly hyper, turns out to have a remarkably potent pen and a disturbing talent for sniffing out front-page scoops. The suspenseful central plot begins when these three journalists discover that their school's social-climbing principal&ndash;a woman who likes to try to dictate the paper's content and use it as a medium for feel-good community relations&ndash;may have misused funds from a bequest to install luxurious amenities in her office. Do they dare pursue the ugly story and risk staining their "permanent records?" This poignant tension between facing thorny truths or acquiescing to more comfortable, but nonetheless insidious, systemic falsehoods&ndash;particularly those perpetuated in education, the media, race relations, and government&ndash;is echoed in subplots throughout the story. This is a deceptively fun read that somehow manages to present kids with some of the most subtle social and ethical questions currently shaping their futures.<I>&ndash;Jeffrey Hastings, Highlander Way Middle School, Howell, MI</I>