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Gennifer Choldenko

Author of Al Capone Does My Shirts

24+ Works 10,138 Members 529 Reviews 2 Favorited
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About the Author

Gennifer Choldenko was born in Santa Monica, California. Gennifer Choldenko is a Newbery Honor-winning American writer of popular books for children and adolescents. Her first novel, Notes From a Liar and Her Dog was named "Best Book of the Year" by School Library Journal and her second, Al Capone show more Does My Shirts, part of Al Capone on Alcatraz series, won the 2005 Newbery Honor citation. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: choldenko.com

Series

Works by Gennifer Choldenko

Associated Works

Guys Read: Thriller (2011) — Contributor — 315 copies

Tagged

1930s (99) adventure (50) Al Capone (163) Alcatraz (398) Alcatraz Island (55) autism (449) baseball (86) brothers and sisters (52) California (68) chapter book (71) children (44) children's (127) coming of age (48) family (301) fantasy (83) fiction (484) friendship (186) Great Depression (75) historical (72) historical fiction (665) history (55) humor (100) juvenile (51) juvenile fiction (62) middle grade (63) middle school (70) mystery (76) Newbery (68) Newbery Honor (167) picture book (53) prison (147) realistic fiction (164) San Francisco (102) school (64) series (72) siblings (136) to-read (157) X (61) YA (140) young adult (140)

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Found: Trapped in brainwashed city fiction in Name that Book (October 2023)

Reviews

The title threw me off, I expected a book about a jerk kid(since those seem to be painfully popular) but instead this is a sweet story of a boy trying to take care of himself an his older sister who is autistic.
 
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mslibrarynerd | 327 other reviews | Jan 13, 2024 |
I love Dan Santat's illustrations. They are so simple and beautiful.
 
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Dances_with_Words | 10 other reviews | Jan 6, 2024 |
I read this back when it came out. I'm not sure why I didn't review it then, but I can't stop thinking about it now. A deadly disease. Mandatory quarantine. Racism against Chinese immigrants. Sound familiar? This book is set in 1900, but so many aspects of it are relevant today with COVID-19.
 
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LibrarianDest | 19 other reviews | Jan 3, 2024 |
The third (and probably final) book about Moose Flanagan is solid middle grade historical fiction. Moose and his Alcatraz community of guards, families, and convicts are still compelling--when you share an island with America's most famous criminals, there's bound to be some drama! In this book, we see Moose's dad has been promoted to Associate Warden. There's a mysterious fire. Moose tries to be everything to everyone (a character trait that was less and less endearing to me as the book progressed), including his friends Annie and Piper (the other two points of a mild tween love triangle) and his big sister Natalie (who most likely has undiagnosed autism), and of course his dad who is now a target because he's a warden. The bad guys, Mr. and Mrs. Trixle, were one-dimensional, that dimensional being terrible. I had more sympathy for the cons.

I enjoyed this book and would gladly recommend this series to pretty much any middle grade reader. I was expecting a bit more of a wow factor that I didn't get, but I'm not complaining. I hope Ms. Choldenko has lots more books left to write. She's good at it.
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LibrarianDest | 19 other reviews | Jan 3, 2024 |

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Statistics

Works
24
Also by
1
Members
10,138
Popularity
#2,341
Rating
3.9
Reviews
529
ISBNs
214
Languages
5
Favorited
2

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