SCHOOLED

Eleven-year-old Lenny, who’s grieving his mother’s death, makes friends and grapples with his emotions at an experimental school based at a college campus.

Lenny Syms’ cynical side quickly shows up even as Dad tries to sell him on the positives of the Copernican School, located at the Tennessee university where he’s a Latin professor. His father has been unmoored and inattentive ever since Lenny’s mom died from skin cancer six months earlier, and the job change and move into campus housing haven’t helped. At school, Lenny and the four other sixth graders—Henrietta Calhoun, Makai Kahele, Allison Somerville, and David Li—experience a rota of offbeat teachers, who oversee “group actualization” and practicums for their “autonomous classroom.” Types are established early, shaping the friendship dynamics. White-presenting Hen is into chi and acupuncture; David, who’s cued Chinese American, is a budding, calculus-savvy engineer; Ally, who’s cued Black through several mentions of her hair, is into cosmetology; and Mak, who seems to be “Hawaiian,” is into football. Feeling forgotten at home and unnoticed at school, Lenny cuts classes and in the process finds a connection with an older professor, who becomes a sort of mentor. First-person narrator Lenny reads white; he and his father, more nuanced than other cast members, grow over the course of the school year. Creative descriptions of odors contribute to a sense of place, and pop-culture references add realism without being so frequent as to quickly date the story.

Quirky characters navigate life’s ups and downs.