Behaving Bradley [Mass Market Paperback]

Perry Nodelman (Author), Ellen Weinstein (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2000

Making rules. As if that's something Bradley Gold wants to get involved in. If it weren't for his buddy, Coll, who roped him into adding his "student input" to Roblin High's new code of conduct, there's no way Brad would have been within ten miles of the parents' committee meeting that turns him into an unwilling activist. With high humor and exquisite farce, Perry Nodelman reveals a side-splitting view of high school law and order.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Eleventh-grader Brad Gold isn't exactly the most popular guy at school these days. When Brad agrees to interject some student opinion into Roblin High School's newly proposed Code of Conduct, he gets a crash course in personal agendas. In the name of the Code, he is abused by power-hungry teachers, ignored by apathetic students, and beat up by the school bullies--two gorilla girls named Mandy and Candy who are determined to maintain the Code's status quo. When the Code is finally approved, idealistic Brad discovers that having a Code of Conduct and enforcing it are two very different things: "I am beginning to notice a pattern here. The pattern is that having a Code of Conduct hasn't changed any of the conduct. The pattern is that everyone around here behaves just as badly as they always did. The pattern is that people around here have about as much mutual respect for each other as a flock of vultures all after the same few tasty bits of corpse." Bewildered by the whole process, Brad decides to chalk up his misadventures as a learning experience and never, ever set foot in politics again.

Perry Nodelman illustrates the absurdities and bureaucracy of high school politics with breezy humor reminiscent of that in Chris Lynch's Elvin comedies Slot Machine and Extreme Elvin. Many teens will find Brad's stab at representing the student body hilariously familiar, making Behaving Bradley a must-read for all past, present, and future student council members and their friends! (Ages 13 to 15) --Jennifer Hubert

From Publishers Weekly

Poor Brad! The hapless Winnipeg 11th-grader is laboring under the delusion that rewriting the Roblin Memorial High School Code of Conduct will actually cause students and faculty to treat one another-and him especially-with respect. Instead, he learns two classic lessons: the more things change, the more they stay the same; and appearances can be deceiving. Nodelman's (The Same Place but Different) hyperbolic novel teems with wicked caricatures of familiar targets: "fat-assed phys ed teachers... going on about the joys of physical activity which they selflessly restrain themselves from actually experiencing"; a platitude-spouting Language Arts teacher who declaims, "Poetry is life! The essence of living!"; a faculty adviser who leers at a comely student. There's not a single sympathetic adult in irrepressible Brad's world, and his fellow students aren't much better. Unfortunately, the lampooning is not enough to sustain a full-length novel, and the chief plot line, about an anonymous enemy who wants Brad to drop his Code of Conduct project, isn't all that compelling. There are a lot of witty moments, just not much holding them together. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Simon Pulse; Reprint edition (February 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689830939
• ISBN-13: 978-0689830938
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,781,123 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Behaving bradley, May 23, 2005

By 

ALexandra "Alex" (Shanghai) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Behaving Bradley (Hardcover)

I like the book `'Behaving Bradley''. What I really like is that you don't know what's going to happen next in the book. I think the author made a good use of foreshadow and there were a lot of twists in the story For example Shawn Gubert is the own that set Franko up against Bradley and the Code of conduct, which was a total surprise. I also admire the way the author uses characterization. He's really good at describing how the characters look like (for example Bradley always wears a baseball cap) but always who they are; by that I mean what they like or dislike and their emotions. The book is really funny! I love the way the author talks about a pretty serious subject (Code of conduct) and turns it into something funny.

What I dislike about the book is the ending. I think the ending should be a little more exciting and it should make more sense. For example Shawn Gubert, the guy that deals drugs, ends up being student council! I think that's kind of weird. The other thing about the ending is that there are still some pieces of the puzzle that are missing. Why did Candace drop out of school? Why did Greg Leskiw resign from student Council? Oh well, I guess not knowing everything does kind of make it more interesting.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Narration Sometimes Amusing, Sometimes Too Cynical, June 6, 2007

By 

A. Luciano (Lowell, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Behaving Bradley (Mass Market Paperback)

Bradley, a high school junior, is completely fed up. In his high school no one seems to respect anyone else. Some people are constantly treated badly by others. The teachers are hypocritical and seem to enjoy making students feel bad about themselves. Now the administration has decided they are going to write and put into effect a code of conduct for the students, telling them how to behave. They pretend they want student input into the code, but they seem to be trying to sneak the code through without student approval. Bradley has a problem with that.

When Bradley attends a student council meeting to see what the student council is planning on doing about the code of conduct, he realizes that they aren't planning on doing anything at all, for fear of upsetting the teachers who give them grades and recommendations to college. But Bradley isn't going to stand for that, either. He tells the student council that they need to investigate the code and to actually get the student input the administration said they wanted.

The student council members are afraid to challenge the code, so they appoint Bradley as the head of the code input team. When he starts investigating, though, he realizes it isn't as easy as he thought. Teachers are angry at him for challenging them. Other students are threatening him for getting involved. And he is beginning to feel as though he may never make things better at his school.

I liked Bradley's style of narration, and I liked how he described the high school experience. I liked the other students and their unique quirks. I also liked Bradley's attitudes about himself and the way he viewed his world. However, Bradley was sometimes a little cynical for my taste and I didn't like the way he thought about Stephanie. I also hated the teachers in this book; they all seemed really awful and didn't care about the students at all.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing short of brilliant, April 9, 2003

By 

kevin mcallister - See all my reviews

This review is from: Behaving Bradley (Mass Market Paperback)

I picked up this book from the school library with the thought in my head that it was going to be incredibly corny and some "school appropriate" version of what being a teenager was like. I was wrong. Brad Gold is a normal teenage guy with insecurities and the tendancy to ogle gorgeous ladies. If you want to get inside a teenage guy's mind - this book will help. If you just want to laugh at the things he points out about how stupid our own teachers are - this book will help. If you just want to read a good book that is so funny you'll find yourself sharing passages with friends - this is your book. In fact, I read this book in about two days, and I'm the type of guy who will read a maximum of about 10 pages a day - and that's when I really like the book. This book is amazing. Give it a try.