The misfits by James Howe
The gang of five is what they call themselves. There are actually only four of them; they figure that the name of their group should be a misfit, the same as the members. There's Bobby Goodspeed, the narrator. Bobby's status as a misfit is the least obvious to the reader, because his main idiosyncracy is that he's fat, and we can't see that. Bobby does not obsess about his obesity, and while the reader is told that Bobby is fat, it its hard to picture him that way. The reader will have no problems visualizing Addie Carle as a misfit; this next member of the group is a vocal liberal who continually runs up against the system. Joe Bunch is a little harder too picture; the gay character is clearly a misfit, but he is still hard to see. His character remains undeveloped throughout the book. Skeezie Tookis is the hooligan, another unprobable character. He's a tough, although we never really see him acting that way; apparently is style of dress and behavior from before the story are enough to set him apart.
The gang of five is in 6th grade, the upper grade in their middle school. Addie decides to create a third party to run for student council. After Addie's party is rejected by the school, whose rules state that any third party must show that it has some unique ideas to rationalize its existance, Bobby comes up with an idea for a third party - The No-Name Party. The premise of the No-Name party is that it wants students to stop calling each other names. It proposes to establish a No-Name day, on which students would not call each other names.
Predictably, the No-Name party loses by a small margin. The students and the administration both learn a lesson. All of the small crises of the characters are resolved in a happy manner (crushes turn out to be held by the other party, nasty adults become friendly, etc.) Altogether, this is a very predictable and flat book. It's only redeeming qualities are that it does point out some of the problems with society, that it has humourous scenes, and that the writing does not have any minor flaws.
Happy reading.
