THE SCHOOL FOR WHATNOTS
Margaret Peterson Haddix


Bouncy Josie meets Max on the first day of school, and their friendship grows strong. They work and play together and are constantly texting when they are apart. After a pool party on the last day of school Max finds a note Josie has written telling him “No matter what anyone tells you, I'm real”. Worried, Max tries to text her but she doesn’t respond; he eventually tries to find her.

Unknown to him, his expensive school is a school for Whatnots - androids so well-made that they pass for real children. Max’s rich parents want him to be surrounded by kind, well-behaved children; they’ve sent him to a school where they believe his environment will be completely controlled.

Josie, however, is in fact a real girl - and a poor one. Her father has agreed to an elaborate scheme, sending her to the school for all but 3 weeks of vacation. He believes this is the only way she will receive a good education and a chance at a scholarship. She believes she and Max are the only real children, and she too is trying to find Max - and unravel the unusual circumstances behind their school.

Margaret Peterson Haddix has once again crafted a stupendous book. This thought-provoking story draws the reader in; an unknown narrator occasionally clarifies or informs the bemused reader of background or details, but now and again the narrator too is nonplussed. Plot twists abound in this engrossing and intricate tale. Highly recommended.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review ( )

The School for Whatnots had a pretty interesting premise: surround a wealthy child with robots in order to protect him through his early childhood years from the usual torments and negative experiences as well as ensuring he doesn't grow up spoiled and privileged when he realizes exactly how wealthy he is. Except one of the other 'androids' is actually a child pretending to be a robot as that is the only way she can get a class-A education. I did read this book in one sitting, and while I really enjoyed the opening chapters, I don't think the themes were explored in depth and the last part of the book fell pretty flat although there were some pretty cool moments in there as well.

The first half of the book was actually pretty good. I was vested in the friendship between Max and Josie and because Max had so little experience with other children, he didn't realize she was not like the other children in his class. Because it is not abnormal for two children to seriously bond, no one would think their friendship was unusual. And that is also where I had issues with this book. Josie was a very unusual child, very inquisitive, and couldn't sit still. I just couldn't imagine the adults in this world had so little scientific background that they would not have noticed that her behaviour was so completely different from the others? There was some talk about Josie's schematics being corrupted, but nothing was ever done about it. Even as a child I would have questioned that.

The second part of the book however, I had to just kind of go with things and try and imagine a child reading this book. Then, I thought, nope. It was just too much. Luckily, I liked the characters although I can't say I was particularly attached to any of them except maybe Josie.

There were a lot of themes running through this book and I do feel like the author didn't quite explore a lot of them to the depth they could have been explored. I was especially disappointed that the distinction between the ultra-rich and the ultra-poor wasn't overly discussed in this book as it played a huge role and is something that could have been highlighted a bit more. Friendship was another theme that could have been explored a bit more, especially the concept of friendship between an android and a child.

Verdict
The School for Whatnots had a lot of potential and I did really enjoy the first half of this book. I liked the concept used to explore themes of bullying and abuse although I do not think the author went deep enough into the topic and some of the issues were too easily resolved. I would have liked a bit more discussion on the world and the deep economic problems that existed and why. Overall however, I do think middle grade readers will enjoy this book and get a lot out of it. ( )

This is charmingly written, engaging, very cute capitalist apologia. The messages of the book are really mixed up. Truly horrible, indefensible, egregious things happen to the poor children in this book, their families, and their communities—but in the end it's all fine because they've moved to the middle class and a family of billionaires are their friends. No structural change to make sure horrible things aren't happening to every other poor community in the country/world is mentioned, and it seems like everyone thinks it's totally fine for billionaires to exist while poor mothers die in underfunded hospitals nearby (explicitly, this is the dichotomy). This probably started out from interesting thoughts about income stratification and automation, but its solutions were nowhere near what was necessary for the world it created. It suffers from a problem in trying to make everyone "nice" in a world where rich families stand blithely by while poor families suffer and are destroyed for their benefit—something that is not nice at all. ( )