By Gordon Korman
A prank goes wrong, a clerical mix-up lands an ordinary troublemaker in the school for geniuses, and he decides to stay.
Donovan Curtis is an ordinary middle-schooler with a real talent for trouble. One dumb impulse sends a two-ton bronze globe rolling down a hill and crashing through the gym wall in the middle of an assembly, and Donovan is certain he's done for. Then the flustered superintendent grabs a list and accidentally types Donovan's name onto the roster for the Academy for Scholastic Distinction, the district's school for gifted children. Donovan can't do the calculus these classmates do for fun, but a school full of geniuses is the last place anyone will come looking for the boy who wrecked the gym. So he keeps his mouth shut, tries to blend in among robotics champions and prodigies, and waits to get caught.
If your child wore out the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, this is a good next step. Same everyday-disaster comedy and short, fast chapters, but there's a real plot holding it together and some actual feeling under the jokes. Korman tells it through a rotating cast of narrators — Donovan, the geniuses, a teacher — so the voice keeps changing and the pages keep moving. And the laughs come wrapped around a real question: what does 'gifted' even mean, and who gets to decide? A reader who loved Greg Heffley but is ready for a book that adds up to something will feel the step up and still get the fun.