22 August 2006  ALL OF THE ABOVE by Shelley Pearsall, Little Brown, September 2006, ISBN: 0-316-11524-X

Sharice:

"As we get closer to finishing, I start having dreams about what's gonna happen when we do. In most of my dreams, there is this big flash of light when we finish the tetrahedron and our school isn't a crumbling, peeling-paint building anymore. It's rainbow colored. (I know this sounds kinda weird.) And our giant pyramid sits on top of the school roof shooting out colors all over the neighborhood, like spotlights. Houses turn shades of red, and orange, and blue. And people stop their cars and roll down their windows to take pictures of the sight." That their one-of-a-kind tetrahedron building project gets off the ground at all is astounding in itself. ALL OF THE ABOVE is a tale of four inner city public school kids -- none of whom are initially friends -- and their math teacher. The teacher, Mr. Collins, acknowledges that he was frustrated with his teaching, his school, his students, and himself when he impulsively announced his brainstorm: a plan to have students come together in an extracurricular math club for the purpose of building a stage seven Sierpinski tetrahedron.

"What the heck is a stage seven Sierpinski tetrahedron?" you might (or might not) be tempted to ask. Well, as I learned, thanks to Rhondell, the member of the student quartet with private dreams of one day attending college, it is a structure composed of 16,384 little tetrahedrons which, in turn, are three dimensional geometric shapes that have four faces, each of which is an equilateral triangle.

And to understand what about this particular book caught my eye -- a book that was formerly to be found amidst my stage seven mountain of review copies -- is to get a sense of my life-long affinity with numbers and mathematical concepts. For front and center on the book's cover is that key number 16,384, a number I instantly recognized as being part of my habitual childhood recitation of the exponents of 2. You know, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384...

Oh...you didn't walk around middle school with those sort of things streaming through your head? Well, regardless, readers will be intrigued by the four urban students (and the teacher) who are all facing personal challenges inside and outside of school:

James Harris III:

"I stare at the window behind Collins and think about how good it would feel to jump out that window and send all that glass flying into the air like one of those jagged comic book pictures with the word 'CRASH' written above it. Get out of school, Collins' class, all the other dumb teacher's classes -- and never come back."

Marcel:

"Ain't spending the rest of my life working at Willy Q's Barbecue. Saying sweet things to customers who don't deserve sweet. Smiling like I care about selling rib bones and chicken wings and pig meat.

"Ain't joining the Army either, like my daddy thinks. Won't salute nobody. Least of all, him."

Sharice:

"You see, foster non-parent #5 (Jolynn) doesn't allow anybody at home when she isn't there and since she isn't there most of the time, I'm not allowed to be there either. Which is why I mostly end up sitting in the blue plastic library chairs, or in the mall food court, or riding around on the city bus (or wherever I can find a seat without too many weirdos or drunks around)."

Rhondell:

"Sometimes I imagine college as a big wooden door where you have to knock and say the right password to get in. Only people who know big words like metamorphosis and epiphany are allowed inside. So, I think I try to save all the words I can because maybe, deep down, I believe they will somehow get me inside college without money or luck.

"But around here if you talk and act like you have dreams, or as if you think you are better than everybody else, it only causes trouble. So, I keep most of my college words locked up in my head, and I try to make it through each day by saying as few words as possible. 'She's quiet' is the way most people describe me, and I figure being quiet is just fine because it means you won't be bothered."

ALL OF THE ABOVE vaguely reminds me of The Breakfast Club. In this case you meet these four random students who just all happen to be in the same math class when their frustrated math teacher decides to launch a seriously wacked math project and all four kids wittingly or unwittingly find themselves captive to the process. And me, the former math team member, found myself right there with them.

So join in. Grab yourself a stack of colored paper, some scissors, a glue gun, some munchies, and partake in the Tetrahedron Club.

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com