The Only Girl in School

By Natalie Standiford

Hi! Have you ever been the only “one”in something? I have! When I went to my aunt’s baby shower, I was the only kid there! The same thing happened with Claire. She was the only girl in her school. She used to have a friend named Bess, but Bess moved. She also had a friend who was a boy. His name was Henry. But Henry turned his back on Claire and started doing mean things to her.

It all started one morning when Claire was walking her brother, Gabe, to school. They waited out on their porch for Henry to walk with them, like usual. They waited for a long time. Henry never showed up. They finally had to get moving and couldn’t wait for him any longer, or else they would have been late for school.

When Claire got to school, she was really surprised and asked Henry why he didn’t walk with her like usual. Henry just acted like he didn’t know what she was talking about. To make matters worse, Claire had to sit next to the yucky boy who liked her. His name was Gilbert, but she secretly called him “Yucky G”. Then “Yucky G” tried to kiss her while they were walking in the hall. Thankfully, he didn’t do it!

The next bad thing that happened was in gym class. They were playing dodgeball and they split up into two teams. Webby (a bully who had been mean to Claire), Henry, and Claire were on one side. “Yucky G” and two other boys were on the other side. As soon as the gym coach, Pow Pow, (who was mean to Claire) blew his whistle, all the boys began throwing their dodgeballs at her – even the ones on her team! When Pow Pow called Claire out (even though her own team was hitting her with balls), she sat on the sideline. Then, the boys continued pegging her with balls! Pow Pow was on his phone the whole time and didn’t even notice!

During lunch, Claire didn’t have anyone to sit by and someone had begun drawing over her drawings on the walls in the bathroom. Whoever it was made her drawings look mean.

Will Claire ever make a friend in her all-boy school? Will her teachers start noticing the kids’ unfair behavior towards her? Will she discover who was writing over her drawings? Or will Claire have the worst 5thgrade year ever? As I always say, read the book to find out!

A few helpful things I like to say about the books I read:

“Run and Get Mom” (how I describe the scariness factor – zero being not scary at all and five being majorly scary): 3 