Al Capone Does My Shirts

Book: Al Capone Does My Shirts
Author: Gennifer Choldenko

Summary of the book:

First off I was very excited to read this book as I when I was younger I heard stories from men who actually met Al Capone when they were children. They said that Al Capone would through them money from his car as he drove by. I also really enjoyed the mafia genre movies and stories throughout my life as well. The book was set up like a bunch of diary entries of a twelve year old boy named Moose Flannigan. Moose and his family had recently moved to Alcatraz, which is a federal penitentiary. They have moved there because his father received a job there.

His sister, Natalie, has autism and really gets most of the families’ attention. At first Moose really doesn’t like the idea of living in Alcatraz, but he slowly adapts to it and starts to enjoy it. He even gets use to his sister getting more attention and even starts to become friendlier to her. Later in the book Moose writes a letter to Al Capone to ask if he could help get his sister, who was having trouble getting into high school, get into high school.

This is another type of book that you are going to have to read to find out the major details as I just think it’s one of those books that you should read on your own. If you want to find out if she actually gets into high school and all of the other details of the story then go to your local library and pick it up!

Critique:

This is another good young adult book that can teach some valuable life lessons. Some of these lessons would include accepting people for who they are even if they are different such as how this had happened with Natalie, Moose’s sister. There is also the fact that peer pressure can influence others into doing things that aren’t right and how bad the ending consequences can be.

This could be a great book to use if you notice things like this happening in your class where people are picking on other children for being different or if there are children being pressured into doing things that they shouldn’t be by their peers. The book is also pretty fun and very enjoyable to read so I would highly recommend this for a classroom or just for a fun book to read on your own.