Personal Rating: 3.5 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.8 Stars Content Rating: PG (there's just a wee bit of strong language) Seventh-grader Sierra Shepard has always been the perfect student, so when she sees that she accidentally brought her mother's lunch bag to school, including a paring knife, she immediately turns in the knife at the school office. Much to her surprise, her beloved principal places her in in-school suspension and sets a hearing for her expulsion, citing the school's ironclad no weapons policy. While there, Sierra spends time with Luke, a boy who's known as a troublemaker, and discovers that he's not the person she assumed he would be--and that the lines between good and bad aren't as clear as she once thought. (goodreads.com) Lately, I’ve been wanting to reading more middle grade books. Why? Because a lot of the time they are stand alones (which is something I appreciate more and more as my TBR list gets longer) and they don’t take a ton of brain power to dissect character motives, love triangles, complicated governments, and even more complicated magic systems. Sometimes, I just want to read a book that will tell me things without me having to invest in reading the whole series to get answers. Sometimes, I just want to be satisfied by a character doing something for no other reason than they wanted to and not because they are choosing between life and death. Sometimes, I like to go back to when I was a young warthog (cue Lion King soundtrack) and I loved reading just to be having fun with a story for no reason. So, I checked out a large stack of middle grade novels from my local library (my current place of employment, BTW) and I started in on them this morning. Another nice thing about middle grade novels is that they tend to be shorter than YA and I finished Zero Tolerance this afternoon. This isn’t the kind of book I liked to read when I was of the age of the target audience for this book. I read a few school stories, but I was far more interested in fairies, dragons, princesses who broke tradition, and charming bands of misguided prince charmings. I liked fantasy a lot, and that was mostly what I read. It’s mostly what I read now, actually, though I’ve expanded my horizons some. School stories never really held my interest as a youngster, so I honestly have no idea why I picked up this book. Once I did the summary made me curious enough to check it out, because it sounds like a good story to be told. Regardless of what I liked and did not like as a middle school kid, I enjoyed this book as a young adult-ish person. Is it my favorite read of the year? No. Is it my favorite read of the month? Actually… probably so far. I’ve been reading a lot of YA recently and this was a nice break. This story was not earth shakingly profound. It didn’t even discuss the politics behind the main problem of the book. It didn’t have long paragraphs discussing internal struggles and the possible consequences of Sierra’s actions. It just told it like it was with a brief sprinkling of discussing what was right and wrong. There was no agonizing conflict about it. What happened, happened, and they rolled with it. To someone who was looking for a book to read and take a break from thinking with, this didn’t bother me at all. As a reviewer looking back on it, okay, sure, Zero Tolerance probably should have spent a little less time worrying over middle school crushes and more time discussing zero tolerance policies in schools and whether or not Sierra should be exempt from punishment because her actions were an accident. It probably should have gotten a little bit meatier with the matter at hand. It did leave me feeling a little bit like I’d just been told someone’s memory about a thing that happened in junior high, that they bring up on occasion because it’s an interesting story. Like, when a relative tells you about a weird thing that happened when they were in school, but the story doesn’t really have a moral to it, they’re just telling you because it’s interesting and entertaining. The characters weren’t particularly memorable, if I’m being honest. I probably won’t remember Sierra Shepard as a great literary character and though Luke was interesting, I’ll probably forget why I liked his character as I move on with life. Colin was funny (though I’m not sure he was supposed to be). Celeste, Lexi, and Em were all your stereotypical protagonist friends and that was kinda meh. But they were fun characters who said fun things and behaved relatably. What more can you ask from a book than to be entertained by its characters and story? There was a bit of a love story, sorta. As much as there can be with seventh graders, I guess (I don’t know because in seventh grade the only time I left the house was for basketball practice so I am lacking in knowledge for what’s normal for seventh grade romance). I thought it was cute. It wasn’t really resolved, but I thought it was cute. It was nice that the So, why I don’t feel like I gained much from reading this book, I had fun. As far as non fantasy books go, it was pretty great. Don’t be surprised if my next few posts are about middle grade books. I’m also thinking about getting a ton of picture books and reviewing a whole bunch in one post, just because I really like picture books and they are fun and tell better jokes than YA books. And they always have a way more daring premise than YA books do. I mean, have you ever seen a Teen or Young Adult book that questioned the possibilities of having a whale in your swimming pool? I don’t think so. Picture books are looking at the real issues here. Well, I’m off to befriend everyone in detention or suspension or whatever! Ta-ta! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15927527-zero-tolerance?ac=1&from_search=true
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