The View from Saturday

I had never read this one, nor anything by the author. I was really impressed. Realistic fiction is not generally my favorite genre, and especially not realistic fiction that features sixth-graders. A state championship, a disabled teacher, and four kids who need life lessons could easily add up to drippy sentiment. But these kids are well-characterized and each has their own voice. The first vignette is particularly fantastic – a bizarre wedding with fabulous characters. The metaphors The Souls come up with are both age-accurate and ageless. I look forward to her other books, one of which is on the list.

From the very first page when we discover that Mrs. Olinsky "didn't know that she didn't know until she did know," readers will know that this book will have a certain level of sophistication and intellectual distance. This book is about four remarkable 6th graders and their remarkable teacher, Mrs. Olinsky. The structure is also remarkable. Konigsburg opens in the present with Mrs. Olinsky using a third-person limited point of view. Then Konigsburg shifts to Noah, one of the four students, and the immediate past using a first person point of view. Once she finishes Noah’s story, she returns to Mrs. Olinsky and the present and continues the pattern of alternating point of view and time. Konigsburg's writing is uncharacteristic of 6th show more grade thinking and writing even though the main characters are 6th graders. Nadia describes her grandpa Izzy's eyes as "bright blue like the sudden underside of a bird wing." Ethan describes the Sillington place as having "so many add-ons it looks like a cluster of second thoughts." The book will be a challenge for many middle school readers, but for those up to the task, it will be a treat. show less

As is probably true of many everyday life books, The View from Saturday is all about the characters. I didn't really care that much about whether or not the four sixth graders won the knowledge bowl in the end; I just enjoyed reading about life from their perspectives.

Four chapters of the book are told first-person by each of the kids, and those were by far the best parts of the book. They're all really articulate, really thoughtful sixth graders who find each other and form a bond between them that involves this ritual of drinking tea on Saturdays, which is where the title comes from.

Yeah, drinking tea together on Saturdays is not the coolest thing in the world to your typical 11 or 12 year old, but it will appeal to readers who think show more of themselves as out of the mainstream, kids who can form their own ideas about what is cool. It's one of those books that's about appreciating how intelligent and complicated 11 or 12 year old people can be (at least from my adult perspective).

In the end, it's the idiosyncratic realness of the voices of the kids that makes this book so memorable and enjoyable. Some readers might argue that the kids are sort of unrealistically mature, kind, and intelligent, but I think extraordinary kids exist and are the kinds of characters that make for a really affecting read. show less

Four sixth-graders with varied backgrounds, but interconnected lives, become friends and join forces to support their new homeroom teacher and beat the eight-graders in the Academic Bowl. An enjoyable story marred by jumping around chronologically and by unnecessary comments about puberty. Audiobook narrator was good.
1996 Newbery Winner

I don't care if you're a sixth-grader or a sixty-year-old, this is a witty book.

Sixth had once been the top grade in elementary school, and was now the bottom grade in middle school. But it was still the place where kids had mastered enough skills to be able to do something with them. It was still the place where kids could add, subtract, multiply and divide, and read. Mostly, they could read – really read. Sixth grade still meant that kids could begin to get inside the print and to the meaning.

The setting is a town in New York state – I did not know then that when I started sixth grade, I would be living in the state of divorce and New York. – and a retirement community in Florida – There are so many blond widows in the state show more of Florida, and they are all so much alike, they ought to have a kennel breed named and registered for them.

A sixth grade teacher must choose four students for her Academic Bowl team – or did they choose her? The students' background stories of what brought them together – their individual journeys – are interspersed with the story of their journey as a Team.

Good stuff here. Good settings, good characters, good story. And if you, too, have often thought, Sixth graders had stopped asking “Now what?” and had started asking “So what?”, you'll enjoy THIS bunch of sixth graders. (3.8 stars) show less

This book appeared on several "recommended" or "award winning" lists I reviewed, but since I knew nothing about it, it took quite awhile for me to finally bring a copy home. Hence, I was unprepared for what I discovered inside, which was nothing short of literary magic. The writing is simply beautiful - not complicated but in no way dumbed down like some children's books I've encountered. The characters are fully fleshed (even the peripheral ones) and sympathetically drawn. I loved the humor and humanity that pervades the entire story. What the author does is the literary equivalent of a five-star, five-course gourmet meal. How I wish there was a sequel - I miss these literary friends already!

What a lovely book. Not sentimental, overwrought, or oversimplified, like much of middle grade children's literature. E. L. Konigsburg's writing is sharp and the story is told with the care and cleverness it deserves. I appreciated her treatment of the unique group of pre-pubescent characters through deft perspective shifts and each with his or her own story of personal growth. What I liked most is that she doesn't assume her audience is incapable of rising to the complexity of the narrative and relationships. This isn't dumbed down for children, but instead perhaps, simplified for adults.