Common Sense Note
Parents should know that Sarah's solution for dealing with the school bully -- beating him up -- is presented as sensible and earns her respect. Franklin is obsessed with danger, and spends much time researching all the ways that children can be hurt and get sick.
These two children, so opposite in so many ways, provide fertile ground for discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the ways in which each deals with their world. Franklin wonders why he has no friends, and why adults react the way they do to Sarah is mysterious to him. What is he missing?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Matt Berman
Out of what sounds in synopsis like a cardboard comedy, filled with stereotypical characters and stock situations, becomes in author Stauffacher's deft treatment, an affecting story with surprising depth. She manages to make Franklin's weird personality believable by combining utter consistency with a light touch; never going too far or making the humor too broad.
But though Franklin is the engaging and humorous narrator, it's not really his story: he is more or less just along for the ride as his mother undertakes Sarah's reclamation. Like Huck Finn, Franklin often describes what he does not really understand, but unlike Twain's character, he gradually starts to get it, and it is that dawning understanding, and eventually even empathy, that enables his heart to begin to gain parity with his intellect. And that's a story worth reading.
From the Book:
My name, if you must know, is Franklin Delano Donuthead.
Try saying that in a room full of fifth graders if you think names will never hurt you.
The Donuthead part comes from way back, from my great-great-great-great-grandfather who came to the United States during the famous turnip famine. Of course he didn't speak a lick of English. His Russian name was something like Donotscked. Somehow, when he came out of the ferry office at Ellis Island with a piece of paper in his hand, he was a Donuthead.
So, basically, I come from a long line of suffering Russian Donutheads.
Plot Summary:
Franklin Delano Donuthead has more problems than his name. He is obsessed with health, safety, and cleanliness. His mother, who is just the opposite, doesn't know what to do with him except to try to get him to play baseball. He is bullied at school and has no friends, except for Gloria, the chief statistician for the National Safety Department, whom Franklin calls at least once a week to discuss all the ways a boy can be injured, maimed, sickened, or killed.
Sarah, the new girl in his class, turns his world upside down. She is everything he is not -- tough, filthy, and illiterate -- and she soon becomes fast friends with Franklin's mother. But Sarah, as Franklin's mother says, has "real problems: she lives in poverty with her abusive father, but dreams of being a figure skater. And Franklin finds himself being drawn very reluctantly into a group of people who are trying to make her dreams come true.
Related Books:
Other Books by Sue Stauffacher
Harry Sue
Quirky Friends
The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt by Patricia MacLachlan
Secret Letters from 0 to 10 by Susie Morgenstern
Losers, Inc. by Claudia Mills
Some Friend by Sally Warner
Sparks by Graham McNamee
Leon and the Spitting Image by Allen Kurzweil
Related Websites
Sue Stauffacher's Website
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Sexual ContentFranklin was conceived by artificial insemination from a sperm donor. |
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ViolenceSarah punches the school bully -- twice. |
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Social BehaviorThe solution to dealing with bullies is beating them up. |
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CommercialismOreos, twinkies, etc. |
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