Simon & Schuster All The Things That Could Go Wrong

Got this after my daughter requested it. It is a great story and it has rekindled her interest in reading for pleasure.

My child loved this book and gives it five stars.

Loved this book, the boys seemed so real. Alex is a boy with OCD that really interrupts his life. That comes with a big germ phobia. I feel that I understand what it is like to have OCD much more than before.My husband has it but he never talks about. it. Alex is being bullied at school by Dan, Sophie and two boys named Richard. Name calling and physical bullying that even involve pushing someone's head in the toilet. I know that happens because my son even experienced that!Also there was a twist. Alex and Dan were forcefully thrown together on the weekends by their mothers who are friends. Dan has been building a raft in a cave and the mothers think it would be a great experience for Alex to help. Well, you can imagine how that went at the beginning. Alex accidentally mentions that his big brother is away from home because he got into trouble with the law. Alex was as surprised as much as I was when I found out that my childhood bully did not have a room of her own at home but had to sleep on the staircase landing!

Bullying is the issue central to this book,focusing on Alex,with the self torment of his OCD, and his tormenting "bully" Dan ( who has his own story of family trauma and emotional distress)Both boys are, unwillingly, thrown together during the school holidays and must struggle to endure the experience or seek to change it. This is a deeply moving story,written in alternate first person chapters so the reader truly witnesses the two sides of the bullied/bully divide. This narrative style allows the author to lead the reader deeper into the emotions,thoughts and personal journeys of each boy and demonstrates to us the complicated way in which our experiences shape our relationship to(and treatment of)others.All The Things That Could Go Wrong is an excellently written, emotive ,tense and extremely moving story with some genuinely poignant moments. The storyline of how bullying affects those involved is all too relevant and real an issue and this makes for compelling and meaningful reading. Absolutely recommended to our pupils and is another of our library favourites.

Alex suffers from OCD. He finds it hard to leave the house. There are germs out there. Birds are in the sky. Cars are on the road. Cars kill people, birds poop on them, and with poop, even more germs He can’t tolerate his live-away dad touching or hugging him anymore. And going to school is even worse because there are people there who are out to get him. Sophie leads the group but Dan is the most frightening, a big, angry kid who seems to hate him. Every day they find new ways to humiliate him.Then Alex and Dan are thrown together, against both of their wills. Dan’s building the raft he and his brother Ben had planned before Ben was picked up by the police and sentenced to a youth camp for who knows how long. Dan misses him more than he can say, and it’s since Ben’s away that Dan’s behavior has turned for the worse. He’s angry all the time. At every body. For everything. But now his mother, and Alex’s mother, both worried about their children, have put them together on weekends and afternoons to work on Dan’s and Ben’s raft. Dan calls Alex Shark Face. He thinks he’s weird, doesn’t understand why he acts so odd. And Dan can’t lose out on his standing in Sophie’s group, who establish their primacy over their classmates by callous, self-indulgent bullying.At first –for a long time!—Alex and Dan don’t get along. Then they do a little, then more, then there’s a rapport of sorts. Dan still doesn’t want to look like a wimp in front of his bully-partners but it bothers him that they’re tormenting Alex. One time, he sees Alex’s list of all the things that worry him and Dan starts to see that Alex is a human being like him but with his own problems. Alex learns about Ben. He starts to understand that Dan isn’t all bad. They both start to sympathize with each other and in the process, appreciate the other’s help on their joint raft project. They start to look forward to working together. From that, other changes take place that help Dan grow, Alex (still with his OCD) understand his problem better, and the two of them find a way to become kind of, sort of, then really true friends.Their story is told in alternating monologues –first Alex’s, then Dan’s. By the end, good things are happening and you’ve seen the start of the very long process of two young boys growing up.Lovely, lovely.