Al Capone Does My Shirts - 2012 Book #17

Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko was a great read. This book is told by the main character: a twelve-year-old boy named Moose. His dad just got a job as a security guard/electrician at the Alcatraz prison, so his family moved to live on Alcatraz Island. He hates the move, but a lot of the guards' families live on the island, and they also moved so his sister could go to a special school. His sister has some form of autism, and a lot of the story is centered around how his family deals with that, since at that time, nobody really knew anything about autism or how to deal with it. Moose tells about how he and his family deal with that, while he's also going to a new school and trying to make friends and get used to life on the island. Some of the other kids on the island get up to some pretty crazy antics, and Moose has to decide if he's going to join them or not.

One thing that Moose is excited about is baseball. The kids at his school get together to play baseball once  a week, and he feels like he's finally found a place where he fits in at his new school. But then, his sister doesn't get accepted into the school his family had been hoping she could attend, and Moose has to watch his sister every day after school. His mom wants him to take him everywhere that he goes, but he's pretty sure it would be a bad idea to take her when he went to play baseball.

As the book progresses, it's interesting to see how Moose's relationships with the other characters int he book change. This book has some really good character development. One thing that was a little confusing in reading this book was when Moose would start talking about things that had happened in the past. Most of the story is told in present tense, which has always been kind of weird to me in novels, but then Moose talks about things that happened when he was younger, so it's a little confusing occassionally when he's having flashback kind of moments. One thing I really liked though about the format was that at the beginning of each chapter, it has the date, so it's really easy to tell exactly how much time has passed since the last chapter.

This was an easy read, but it also had some good messages and great character development in a well developed story. There is a sequel to this book that I am excited to read.