From pesky little sisters to pet tarantulas, supportive friends to Tweety Bird underwear, these four middle-grade novels from Tom Birdseye have something for everyone. Tucker: Eleven-year-old Tucker Renfro likes his life with his divorced father, and enjoys fantasizing about being a Native American and hunting deer-until the nine-year-old sister he has not seen in years comes to visit and claims their mother wants them to become one family again. Tarantula Shoes: Desperate to have the right basketball sneakers for his first day of sixth grade in a new middle school in Kentucky, Ryan O'Keefe has set his sights on the $125 Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers. All the coolest seventh graders are wearing them. His parents have given him forty dollars-but how can he put together the rest of the money before school starts? Could the answer actually have something to do with his pet tarantula, Fang? Just Call Me Stupid: Traumatized by an alcoholic father who used to call him "stupid" and lock him in a closet for punishment, fifth-grader Patrick Lowe is unable to learn to read, even after his mother got a divorce and they moved to Tucson. An impatient teacher and a class bully don't help. But a new neighbor, Celina, encourages him to try to overcome his fears. As she reads him The Sword in the Stone, she inspires Patrick to tell his own story out loud, one he might be able to read himself someday. Attack of the Mutant Underwear: When his parents move to Benton, Oregon, for his fifth grade year, Cody Lee Carson is determined reinvent himself as a cool kid-especially since no one in his new school knows about the incident in fourth grade when his pants fell down during a school play and everyone saw his Tweety Bird underwear. Here is Cody's journal of how to leave your past-and your old underwear-behind.
