The Misfits cover

The Misfits

by James Howe

Four misfits run for student government. Their platform: stop the names.

For you if

you have been called a name that stuck and want a book that takes that seriously as a political problem not just a personal one

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Four seventh-grade friends — the fat kid, the gay kid, the tall girl, the angry kid — decide to run for student government on a No-Name-Calling platform. They don't win. That's not the point. Howe wrote this in 2001, before most schools had anti-bullying policies, as a direct argument that name-calling is a form of violence and that the kids most targeted by it deserve a political response, not just a therapeutic one. The book that launched No Name-Calling Week in schools across America. The most explicitly political middle grade novel on this shelf and the one that most directly tells kids that the personal is political.

Where This Book Lives

Setting
North America
Voice
Written by a North America author

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