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He's in seventh grade now, and just as humorous and feisty, loaded with self-esteem and ready to share his experiences of being mainstreamed. The compassionate, strong and irascible interpreter, Mrs. Birge, returns, too. Seventh grade in Jackson Junior High School offers challenges, harrowing experiences an... More

He's in seventh grade now, and just as humorous and feisty, loaded with self-esteem and ready to share his experiences of being mainstreamed. The compassionate, strong and irascible interpreter, Mrs. Birge, returns, too. Seventh grade in Jackson Junior High School offers challenges, harrowing experiences and delicately wrought humorous insights as to what is like to be deaf and normal in a "hearing" world. The story starts with Day One and the dreaded "book dump," and includes episodes in the boys' locker room (changing into sports uniform en masse for the first time), basketball, Personal and Family Life Science (A.K.A. Home Eco./ cooking), football (tackling practice), the "Fall Fling" (school dance), Industrial Technology and a bloody accident, Shakespeare in English class and studying for vocabulary/spelling tests, World Geography and foods to taste before they are identified, and Cross country Skiing. Jake also becomes introspective about his ISS (In School Suspension), and his possible jealousy about the new deaf kid in class, Jon, who is so good in sports and who might offer him competition for Mrs. Birge and elsewhere. Jake's narrative ends on the last day of school, his last day of being a sevy. The class is at the Wide World Amusement Park, land of heart-stopping thrills.