Nothing But the Truth

I had such a reaction to this book. The entire story is based on a small miscommunication that snowballs into a giant fiasco involving the school board and superintendent. Philip Malloy is in 9^th grade, and gets suspended from school for humming along with the national anthem during the morning announcements. I felt so bad for his teacher who got blamed for the whole mess. Here is a woman who challenges herself to be a stronger teacher, but because she sends a student to the assistant principal for making a disturbance during a moment of silence, she is disliked by a multitude of people around the country. People really lashed out against her with only one side of the story and when given a chance to respond, the newspaper does not print it. How often does this happen, where we make split-second decisions and react based on one side of the story? It’s tragic and difficult to read! I wanted to reach into the book and just fix everything, but of course I can only be an observer. Philip’s parents are included in this one-sided dislike for the teacher. Mrs. Malloy blindly believes whatever her son says, while Mr. Malloy is urging Philip to stand for his rights, knowing that he himself cannot do the same at his work. Meanwhile, the superintendent is trying to appease a man running for school board who also happens to be the Malloy’s neighbor. In the course of events, the school is trying to get a new budget approved, and while the superintendent is buttering up the candidate for school board and selling out Ms. Narwin (the teacher), the budget doesn’t even get approved. (This, as a side note, is a real disappointment. After much time spent in the papers, this school needed a triumph and good news to get them back on track. I couldn’t believe the school board rejected it.) This leaves Philip, who is no angel himself, just a 14 year old boy who wants to run track for his school and dislikes his English teacher because her class is too hard.

The book is written as a documentary novel, meaning it is only dialogue. There are no descriptive paragraphs, only conversations between characters in the story. Philip’s diary entries are the only sections not written like this, but they are needed to give a clear idea of his 14-year-old thoughts. I enjoyed having only dialogue, which illustrates how important speech can be throughout a story. It did not matter what any of the characters looked like or thought to themselves; all that mattered was what they said and did.

Ironic that the title of the story is Nothing But The Truth, but the only person who actually knows the truth is the reader. I kept hoping it would be resolved in the end, but the characters just went about their lives, glad the conflict has resided from headline news. I’m wondering what the author’s thoughts on this conflict really are – did Avi have an experience like this? If not, what was his inspiration? What is he really trying to say? I wish there had been an Author’s Note at the end explaining the origin of this story.