Report to the Principals Office [Turtleback]

Jerry Spinelli (Author)

Product Details

• Turtleback
• Publisher: Demco Media (October 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0606007350
• ISBN-13: 978-0606007351
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,899,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Growing up, Jerry Spinelli was really serious about baseball. He played for the Green Sox Little League team in his hometown of Norristown, Pennsylvania, and dreamed of one day playing for the major leagues, preferably as shortstop for the New York Yankees.

One night during high school, Spinelli watched the football team win an exciting game against one of the best teams in the country. While everyone else rode about town tooting horns in celebration, Spinelli went home and wrote "Goal to Go," a poem about the game's defining moment, a goal-line stand. His father submitted the poem to the Norristown Times-Herald and it was featured in the middle of the sports page a few days later. He then traded in his baseball bat for a pencil, because he knew that he wanted to become a writer.

After graduating from Gettysburg College with an English degree, Spinelli worked full time as a magazine editor. Every day on his lunch hour, he would close his office door and craft novels on yellow magazine copy paper. He wrote four adult novels in 12 years of lunchtime writing, but none of these were accepted for publication. When he submitted a fifth novel about a 13-year-old boy, adult publishers once again rejected his work, but children's publishers embraced it. Spinelli feels that he accidentally became an author of children's books.

Spinelli's hilarious books entertain both children and young adults. Readers see his life in his autobiography Knots in My Yo-Yo String, as well as in his fiction. Crash came out of his desire to include the beloved Penn Relays of his home state of Pennsylvania in a book, while Maniac Magee is set in a fictional town based on his own hometown.

When asked if he does research for his writing, Spinelli says: "The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first 15 years of my life turned out to be one big research project. I thought I was simply growing up in Norristown, Pennsylvania; looking back now I can see that I was also gathering material that would one day find its way into my books."

On inspiration, the author says: "Ideas come from ordinary, everyday life. And from imagination. And from feelings. And from memories. Memories of dust in my sneakers and humming whitewalls down a hill called Monkey."

Spinelli lives with his wife and fellow writer, Eileen, in West Chester, Pennsylvania. While they write in separate rooms of the house, the couple edits and celebrates one another's work. Their six children have given Jerry Spinelli a plethora of clever material for his writing.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book!, January 18, 2003

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Report To The Principal's Office (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) (School Days Series) (School & Library Binding)

This book grabs you and ... you in! It has a great beginning and it's very funny. You feel the emotions of the characters and I never laugh out loud when reading a book, but I did when reading this one! I got this book from RIF, a program where you get a free book. Thid book is about 4 kids who are starting in Junior High at 6th grade. On the first day, the WHOLE first day(!) they get into some very crazy things.

1. They get hijected on the school bus and are taken to the local Getty Gas Station. Then they walk home.

2. While trying to eat lunch with the principal, a hamster burrows into thier burritos!

And more! I reccomend this book to Jerry Spinnelli fans

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What a way to start the school year!, April 16, 2004

By 

Josh (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Report To The Principal's Office! (School Daze Series) (Mass Market Paperback)

Sunny is mean, despite her cheery name, and she'll do whatever it takes to get expelled from Plumstead Middle School. Eddie is a wimp, and he'll do whatever it takes to not be killed by seventh and eigth graders. Salem is a writer, and she's always taking notes about life so she can have a good story. Pickles invents stuff, and is well-liked around town. These four kids have only one thing in common--they're going to report to the principal's office!

This book was pretty good. I really like Jerry Spinelli's books, and this book was no exception. There were a lot of funny parts. But there were also a lot of boring parts. I would still recommend this book to someone, though. Another thing I like about this book is it tells the truth about sixth grade life. There are so many other books about sixth grade that are so unrealistic.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The First In The School Daze Series Is A Hit!, August 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Report To The Principal's Office (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) (School Days Series) (School & Library Binding)

"Report To The Principal's Office" gave me many hours of fun and laughter and "awwww"s. Jerry Spinelli has created a group of 4 sixth-graders whose adventures are side-splitting funny and reminiscent of the Junior High days. The plot isn't what's important, it's the human interest story. For example, cheering when Sunny washes her hair for the first time in 3 weeks because she finally decides she could get used to her new school, or laughing with Pickles when he catches the hamster, or feeling awful for Eddie who sacrificed himself for Salem... Jerry Spinelli writes like the movies, where you hear the swelling music at the end for the hero and you want to stand up and yell encouragement. The books are easy to read, and fun to memorize, and lots of fun to pass on to others. I wholeheartidly recommend the School Daze Series to everyone except maybe the upstrung politicians with a pickle up their tush. The other 3 books in the School Daze Series are: "Who Ran My Underware Up The Flagpole?" "Picklemania" and "Do The Funky Pickle", all by Jerry Spinelli.