Ah, the perils of fifth grade!
A neither here nor there time, an awkward “tween” time when — as Charli says — “Death by embarrassment is not off the table.”
Charli’s real name is Charlotte and she is one half of the BFF duo of Charli and Alex, two diary-writing fifth graders whose observations on such fifth-grade dramas as mad crushes, fear of butterflies, lady bugs getting up your nose and blue slurp coming out of it, fill their diaries and the pages of a hilarious new book co-authored and illustrated by Mark Parisi, a Gloucester native. Parisi is the award-winning nationally syndicated cartoonist of “Off The Mark,” which appears on this newspaper’s comic pages.
The book, “The Truth about Fifth Grade” is Parisi’s fourth, but his first time collaborating with a co-author, in this case Arizona-based author and teacher Kim Tomsic, aka “Charli.”
Billed as “A funny he-said-she-said diary, a “tween” perspective on “what really goes down in 5th grade,” the book, due for release Aug. 27, is the brainchild of Harper Collins editor David Linker, who, having worked with both Parisi and Tomsic, recognized in them a kismet of quirky talents.
It was an arranged marriage that worked just as Linker thought it would: the two creative minds meeting over months, and — due to COVID-19, years — by phone and email. For his part, Parisi has nothing but wonderful things to say about Tomsic, and ditto for Tomsic about Parisi.
As Alex and Charli, their personalities are established right off the bat by, in Charli’s case, oodles of doodles of girlish hearts and flowers and stars, and in Alex’s case, the kind of whacky cartoons Parisi made famous through his earlier “Marty Pants” books, three of which were also edited by Linker, whose history of publishing for kids includes years as executive managing editor at Disney Publishing.
Charli has a school-girl crush, and it’s not on Alex, but on Henry, with whom she shares a passion for sloths. Alex ‘s passion is more for video games. It was his mother’s idea for him to write a diary in the first place “to get in touch with your feelings” —to which Alex initially replied, “I know what I feel. I feel I want to play video games.”
But there’s a lot more to Alex than just video games, and there’s a lot more to Charli than just a mad crush on Henry and a shared passion for sloths.
For one thing, there’s the science fair, a challenge which sees the two besties bond through all manner of misadventure in pursuit of gold. and then, of course, it’s their undying friendship which is almost fatally threatened when Alex does something which Charli feels is a betrayal.
Alex, being a typical boy, has no idea what he’s done to upset Charli, and Charli, for her part, makes Alex’s life miserable.
As the two struggle to get on the same page, the pages — there are some 180 of them — become funnier and feistier and so do the reader’s laugh-out-loud moments.
Fifth graders and their parents, take note and stay tuned: Plans are afoot for readings at local libraries and book shops. Meanwhile, the book is available for advance purchase on Amazon, at https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-5th-Grade/dp/0063038714..