Diary of a 5th Grade Outlaw 3: Who Is the Bucks
Bandit? By
Gina Loveless. Illustrations by Andrea Bell. Andrews McMeel. $13.99.
Once again the Merry Men…err, Merry
Misfits…stride forth in Nottingham…err, Nottingham Elementary School…led by
Robin Hood…err, Robin, wearing a hoodie. The third Diary of a 5th Grade Outlaw series entry is a distinct
case of more-of-the-same, filled with minor arguments and major (well,
seemingly major) misunderstandings involving Robin Loxley (a nod to the Robin
Hood legend, whose central character was the outlaw Robin of Loxley, or
Locksley) and her friends. The friends are also minor reflections, very minor
ones, of characters in the Robin Hood tale: there is Mary Ann instead of Maid
Marian, for example, and there are rapping twins Allana and Dale, a slight nod
to minstrel Allan-a-Dale. But the underlying premise requires Gina Loveless to
redefine just what an “outlaw” is, since it would be thoroughly unacceptable to
build stories around someone who, you know, actually operates outside the law.
Thus, Robin directly states to her friends (and to readers) that something like
stealing, even in a good cause, is “not what being an outlaw means to me. It
doesn’t mean breaking the law or school rules. Being an outlaw means doing
what’s right when nobody else is going to and not caring what other people
think, because you know it’s the
right thing to do.”
Everybody got that? Throw out your
dictionaries and any books you might have about Robin Hood and his praiseworthy
reasons for breaking the law (many times): being an outlaw means not going against the law (or rules).
The audience for this book series consists
of fifth-graders (more or less) who will not think to question this underlying
premise and will simply enjoy the hijinks, antics and attempted underlying
seriousness of purpose with which Loveless presents the stories. Loveless
actually builds the books around concerns that are supposed to be serious,
using the scaffolding of the Robin Hood connections to erect tales of life
lessons onto which she tries to graft enough humor (abetted by Andrea Bell’s
illustrations) so that the serious stuff comes through clearly and goes down
easily.
This means that it seems that Nottingham
Elementary continues to have the same issues with its student-rewards program
that it has had through the first two books in the third, Who Is the Bucks Bandit? It helps to read these books in order,
since this third one makes only brief and passing references to events in the
first two – which are important to know and understand in order to follow the
ins and outs of the students’ relationships, arguments and territorial disputes.
In the third book, a new character named Wilu Johnson comes to the school and
is soon suspected by some students of being responsible for the mysterious
disappearances of “bonus bucks” from various teachers’ desks. That leads to
accusations and counter-accusations among the students, with Robin, who
narrates the book, trying to sort everything out fairly, but ending up being
blamed – by Wilu himself – for the supposed thefts. “‘How could you think it’s
me?’ I shouted. ‘I’m the only one who’s been nice to you all week long!’ Wilu
squinted his eyes at me. ‘You were probably just getting close to me so you
could make it look like it was me, when really it was you all along.’” Standard
misdirection, conspiracy theories and elementary-school-sized paranoia are the
name of the game throughout the Diary of
a 5th Grade Outlaw books, so this exchange fits right in.
Of course, neither Wilu nor Robin is actually responsible for the bonus-bucks problem. They and Nadia, who was Robin’s main nemesis in the first book but with whom Robin now sort of gets along, end up being summoned to the principal’s office; the illustration showing the three with concrete blocks on their feet as they unwillingly shuffle to the office is one of Bell’s best, showing their figurative unhappiness at going to see Principal Roberta. It then turns out that the bonus bucks were missing because of an ill-conceived plan by the principal herself to alter or eliminate the whole bonus-bucks program – a plan that the principal apparently thought to further by concealing what she was doing and letting the kids get into arguments and accusations about what was going on. This is clearly a principal who would fit in just fine in fifth grade. In any case, everything ends happily for the students, and Wilu becomes one of the Merry Misfits, and it is a fair bet that the next book in the Diary of a 5th Grade Outlaw series will offer still more of the still-the-same – which, for kids who enjoy this easy-to-read, lightly plotted, emotionally unchallenging series, will be just fine.
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