Family Circle

The View From Saturday is a great, funny, but intelligent book, with complex dialogue, which tells the story of four six graders whose lives are twisted together by their paraplegic teacher who needs them for the Academic Bowl as a team. The story of their get-togethers, histories, and other facts let the book be a must-read.

This book is comprised of four short stories about the four members of the Academic Bowl teams’ histories and how they met each other, with small episodes of the Academic Bowl finals between them, each with a question referring to one of thiers’ past. For example, Nadia, whose godmother and faster are turtle experts, gets asked a question about the species of turtle around the area. As the Bowl comes to the intermission, another chapter of events come as the teacher has a story about her choosing the team, which the friends had more reasons for.

This book used many great writing techniques, as the author, E.L.Konigsburg, had written every short story in first person with each character’s own unique voice. She also had very good transitions between each story. Her voices ranged from freelancing to hard and serious. Sadly, some of her events were very confusing, as each story had very similar characters with similar names, and some carried over to other stories.

Rating: 7/10 for
Pros: Excellent technique, story
Cons: Too many characters