Chain Gang Elementary

by Jonathan Grant

Overview

"In the first place, God created idiots. This was for practice. Then he created School Boards." -Mark Twain After a murder at Bonaire Elementary, Richard and Anna Lee Gray seek a good school for their son Nick in a safe neighborhood. Their search leads them to Malliford, a "school of excellence." When redistricting sends scores of minority students to Malliford, iron-willed Principal Estelle Rutherford declares war on kids to raise test scores and save her reputation. Dissident parents revolt, electing Richard to head the Parent-Teacher Organization, and tensions explode. Welcome to Chain Gang Elementary, home to vast right-wing conspiracies, 3rd-grade gangsters, and bake sale embezzlers-where toxic childhood secrets boil over, reformers go stark raving mad, and culture wars escalate into armed conflict. A tale of war that is poignant, timely, and brutally funny, Chain Gang Elementary is a One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest for the K-6 world. First Sentence: In the twelfth year of his marriage, sixteen months before the shooting, twenty-one shopping days until Christmas, and eight hours before he reckoned for the tenth time that his wife didn't love him, Richard Gray met a woman who would have roughly the same effect on his life a tornado has on a trailer park.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780983492108
Publisher:	Thornbriar Press
Publication date:	07/14/2011
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

Editorial Reviews

In Grant's satirical novel, Richard Gray is a self-righteous newsletter editor and stay-at-home dad thrust into the local spotlight after assuming the presidency of the bitterly divided parent-teacher organization at his child's school. As president, Richard juggles the demands of overinvolved parents, the licentious PTO secretary, and his precocious son and emotionally frigid wife, all while waging war against Estelle Rutherford, the demagogic principal of Malliford Elementary, and her blatantly racist policies meant to protect the school's reputation. Although Grant provides trenchant criticisms of educational policy, much of his novel resembles an overripe soap opera. And while predictable and convenient plotting, inconsistent characterization, and sloppy exposition are saved by Grant's acerbic wit, in the end his novel is undermined by the specters of sexual abuse and murder that haunt his protagonist's past. A brief interlude in which Richard returns to his childhood home to attend his father's funeral and solve a dark crime from his youth is at once the most incongruous and most enticing portion of the novel. But once Grant has exposed Richard's dark history, none of the remaining twists and turns of this suburban intrigue seem equally important.

Publishers Weekly