Hello! Today, I will be discussing an educational and amazing book called All of the Above.
All of the Above starts off with a teacher named Mr. Collins, who is a bit irritated by how some of his students aren’t really paying attention in class. So he decides to come up with a math club so that maybe people would find his math class a bit more interesting.
Six kids are in the club just by random name picking done by Mr. Collins. Those kids are James, Rhondell, Sharice, Marcel, and two other girls who barely come. James becomes the president of the club, since those two girls never come anymore. So now there are 4 kids in the club, and the project is that they are all going to build the world’s largest tetrahedron ever! A tetrahedron is a triangle-shaped tower made by using triangular pieces. Before, no one was completing anything or doing much about the tower. But now that James is in charge, people start doing a bit more.
James starts coming to meetings not only because of how this will help his grade, but also because he starts to enjoy it a bit. Marcel tries to come a bit more as well since his uncle didn’t know about him coming there and didn’t want him to come. Sharice and Rhondell have no trouble coming to the club. They all make a plan to form the tetrahedron and make it rainbow!
With James’s creativity, Marcel’s smarts, and Sharice’s and Rhondell’s effort, they end up almost finishing their tetrahedron. Two more weeks and they would be done! One day, James accidentally tells his brother’s friend, Markese, about the math project that they’re doing at school. So after Sharice accidentally forgets to lock the classroom door after staying late there, they probably went in and ruined it all.
When everyone comes in the next day, they stare at the progress ruined. Sharice starts crying and tries to gather all of the pieces, and James punches the lockers. (That’s a little aggressive.) So James gets determined again to make the whole thing again and tries to rejoin everyone. Meanwhile, after school, Sharice stays outside her foster mom’s house in the cold. Rhondell wants to talk to her, so she comes to her house and finds Sharice. Sharice gets brought to Rhondell’s house, and she even stays with Rhondell as well as getting adopted by Rhondell’s aunt, Aunt Asia!
James, Marcel, Sharice, and Rhondell are brought together again and start over again on the project, along with a bit of help from their friends and relatives. Finally, after a long amount of effort and hard work, the project gets finished in the beginning of July. Sadly, James isn’t there to see it since he is moving somewhere else with his uncle and brother. But he does get to see it getting in the newspaper. The tetrahedron turned out to be about 9 feet tall and had about 16,300 pieces, which beat the world record of the other school!
This book is rated 5 stars by me! I love how its plot is actually based on a true story about people trying to get into the world records for the tallest tetrahedron. It’s also amazing to see teamwork and persistence in action in this book. I would recommend it to people who want to read something interesting and fun to read. So go ahead and get started on this book, because I guarantee that your eyes will be glued to the pages!
Written by Kruti Patel
