Standing up to Mr. O

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Overview

A seventh-grade girl refuses to do dissections.

Maggie McIntosh is crazy about her biology teacher and loves to impress him with her academic excellence. But when the dreaded day of the first dissection arrives, Maggie has to disappoint Mr. O. There's no way she can cut up a worm.

Maggie's best friend, Alycia, understands. Alycia is squeamish, too, and shares Maggie's moral outrage. However, she's willing to keep quiet and let her lab partner ...

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More About This Book

Overview

A seventh-grade girl refuses to do dissections.

Maggie McIntosh is crazy about her biology teacher and loves to impress him with her academic excellence. But when the dreaded day of the first dissection arrives, Maggie has to disappoint Mr. O. There's no way she can cut up a worm.

Maggie's best friend, Alycia, understands. Alycia is squeamish, too, and shares Maggie's moral outrage. However, she's willing to keep quiet and let her lab partner do the dirty work. Maggie's own lab partner, Matt, completely disagrees. Then, after Maggie walks out on the dissection, he seems to respect her. And classmate Jake, who follows Maggie out the door, appears positively smitten.

As she struggles to clarify her position about dissections, Maggie discovers that people and relationships are not always what they seem, and just as there are no perfect fathers (hers left years before), there are no perfect father figures - or even friends.

Twelve-year-old Maggie comes to dread biology class because her favorite teacher is insisting that she dissect a worm, an assignment that makes her feel very squeamish and awakens her to the question of animal rights.

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Editorial Reviews

Children's Literature - Kathleen Karr
Maggie loves her seventh grade biology teacher until he asks the class to dissect a worm. This modest request makes a rebel of an otherwise perfect A-student. Maggie slides from horror to vegetarianism to frog-stealing in Mills's portrait of an adolescent torn between a quest for father figures, first love, and her first big moral quandry. Mills explores the do or die mentality of the hormonal set with grace and wisdom.
Horn Book
Worms, fish, frogs-Maggie doesn't want to touch them, much less dissect them, but her favorite seventh-grade teacher, Mr. O., will fail her if she doesn't. Not wanting to disappoint the beloved leader of "Camp Biology," Maggie conquers her squeamishness, only to find that her real problem with dissecting is not that it's icky, but that it's immoral: she just plain doesn't want to kill anything. Goaded on by arguments with lab partner Matt ("Animals don't think. I told you, a worm barely has a brain. It has nothing to think with. It has nothing to think about"), Maggie grapples with big questions. She becomes a vegetarian, flirts briefly with a vegan diet (before discovering free-range hen eggs and family farm "happy-cow milk"), and refuses to take part in the dissection labs. Self-righteous at first, she argues with best friend Alycia, who lets her lab partner do all the dirty work; her anger becomes righteous when Mr. O. prevents Maggie's anti-dissection essay from winning a well-deserved prize because he disagrees with her point of view. But Maggie learns to face her disappointment in others with moderation and compassion, and discovers that flaws-in friends, fave teachers, deadbeat dads, attrac-tive but troubled guys, and blunt but honest lab partners-are best judged on a sliding scale. Maggie's strong sentiments are lightened by her carefree sense of humor; readers will stand by her, whether they agree-or agree to disagree-with her cause.
Kirkus Reviews
Maggie hates to disappoint her favorite teacher, Mr. O'Neill, but a combination of squeamishness and principles results in her refusal to participate in dissection labs, and in her writing an essay on the immorality of killing animals. Matt, her lab partner, presses her on hypocritical aspects of her own behavior; Maggie turns vegetarian, then vegan, fights with her best friend, attracts the attentions of handsome but angry rebel Jake, and remains calm when her essay is unfairly rejected for a writing prize. Mills (Gus and Grandpa Ride the Train, p. 115, etc.) explores many aspects of morality, allows Maggie's opponents to have equal force and charm, and reveals in interesting and realistic fashion the inconsistencies in the debate. Once again Mills renders the trials of a good kid in a sympathetic and believable style, while giving readers plenty to ponder. (Fiction. 8-12)
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780786814046
  • Publisher: Hyperion
  • Publication date: 6/1/2000
  • Edition description: 1 ED
  • Pages: 176
  • Age range: 8 - 12 Years
  • Lexile: 690L (what's this?)
  • Product dimensions: 5.25 (w) x 7.75 (h) x 0.50 (d)

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