eshchory

At first I thought this would be the usual story of the problem child in the classroom learning to be good and making friends but the story didn't take the straight path from A-B.

The character development was much stronger than I expected in such a short book and there was no easy attribution of black hats and white hats.
Bradley's family was quite pleasant and not to blame for his behaviour and the teachers though obviously exasperated with him were also more than happy to respond to any improvement he made.

To be honest in the first few pages I had serious concerns about Bradley's mental health with him being so totally isolated from the outside world and communicating only with his toys.

Although the story was obviously leading us to the 'new Bradley' the setbacks he suffered were realistic and peripheral story lines showed us that none of the children passed through life completely untroubled.

The only niggle I have is that during the party scene the author seemed to be laying the foundation for further development of Jeff's character but nothing came of it.
I did wonder if book was aimed at too young an audience (or maybe at non-reading under-achievers like Bradley) because I felt that the story and the author's talents would have been better served if the story had been in a longer format.