The Next Great Paulie Fink by Ali Benjamin
Children’s novel for grades 4-8; realistic
Caitlyn Breen is beginning seventh grade at a new school that is completely unlike everything she’s known before. For one thing, the rural Vermont town of Mitchell is so small that she’s one of only eleven students in her whole grade. When Caitlyn’s classmates were in kindergarten, the community started their own school on an experimental basis. The building is a repurposed mansion that Caitlyn thinks looks like a haunted house, and the curriculum includes caring for goats that the school has acquired for the purpose of grazing and thereby clearing away the plants that keep growing in the soccer field. Caitlyn is also surprised by the interaction between students in different grades at Mitchell School. The assigned seating for lunchtime is specifically designed to mix the age groups, and everyone in Caitlyn’s class is matched with a kindergartener in order to help the younger kids adjust to the school environment. (Caitlyn somewhat affectionately nicknames her kindergartener “Fuzzy” because of the girl’s stuffed rabbit)
A new student is a big deal in a school this small, but Caitlyn’s classmates seem to be even more interested in the student who isn’t there anymore. His name is Paulie Fink, and he was evidently quite a character.Caitlyn’s classmates constantly tell her stories about his many practical jokes and how fun and exciting everything was with him there. When they find an old shirt of his in the lost and found, they declare it to be a good luck charm. Eventually, they even start using his name as a sort of rallying cry. Although Caitlyn never met him, she follows suit and starts using him as a character in the fantastical stories she tells Fuzzy.
Gabby, one of Caitlyn’s classmate, is obsessed with reality television, especially one particular show called The Search for the Next Great Megastar. The seventh graders at Mitchell School eventually hit upon the idea of creating their own reality-show-style contest to choose one of them as a sort of successor to the legendary Paulie Fink. Caitlyn is appointed the judge, partly because her personality seems to fit the task, but mostly because she’s presumably the most objective judge due to her status as the new kid and the only one who didn’t know Paulie Fink personally. Caitlyn is responsible for designing challenges to test her classmates’ abilities to perform Paulie-like feats. Meanwhile, she interviews students and teachers in an attempt to better comprehend the nature of Paulie Fink. There are sections throughout the whole book that are written in interview format.
There are a couple significant side plots. For one thing, Caitlyn is having a hard time staying in touch with her friends from her old school. They keep ignoring her texts and even un-invite her from a sleepover by rescheduling it without telling her. Caitlyn finds herself thinking about another former classmate, Anna Spang, who nobody liked. (Like Paulie Fink, Anna Spang’s reputation was so firmly cemented that her name could be applied to other people if they were like her in certain ways) Caitlyn gradually comes to the realization that, at her old school, she was becoming the stereotypical middle school mean girl. Meanwhile, Mitchell School is counting down to their big soccer game against Devlinshire, another small rural school in a much wealthier community. The schools have been long-term soccer rivals, and there’s an implication that the rivalry is just as much about socioeconomic status as it is about soccer. As it turns out, Mitchell can’t afford to stay open. Caitlyn hears about this before most of her classmates, but later, everyone finds out and it makes the local news.
While all of these various plot points and subplots are happening, much of the content of this book has to do with the things Caitlyn’s class is discussing. One teacher, Mr. Farabi, uses the goats as an opportunity for lessons on ecology and husbandry, and their homeroom teacher, generally just called Mags, is using ancient Greek culture and philosophy as an overarching theme for this year’s curriculum. In response the students’ initial apathetic attitude, she agrees to let the kids pick each day’s discussion topics and she challenges herself to find a way to relate all of these topics back to Ancient Greece. The result is that the seventh grade class incorporates concepts such as arete (honor, integrity) kleos, (glory, being remembered) and pharmakos (a scapegoat) into their everyday conversations. For example, everyone agrees that Paulie Fink is the perfect example of kleos, and there’s debate about whether he had the arete to make sure his pranks were harmless, or whether he was just being a class clown. This book is impressively educational and intellectual for a fictional middle grade novel with the seemingly silly premise of kids idolizing a former classmate to the extreme.
I loved this story, but to be honest, the ending disappointed me. I’m not going to spoil it by revealing what happened to Paulie Fink or describing the part where he makes his appearance in the book, but frankly, I think it would have been better if Caitlyn and the reader never did get to meet him. I found it meaningful that it was never entirely clear whether the stories about him were true or exaggerated. It fit in nicely with some of the discussion about history and kleos. This is a story all about reputation, and I would have preferred for Paulie Fink to be nothing but reputation. Despite my misgivings about the ending of the book, overall, I highly recommend it.
Librarian Magdalena 