Bsls #38: Karen's Big Lie

Synopsis: One day, in Ms. Colman's class, Ms. Colman makes an announcement that the students would be taking Math quizzes on whatever they have learned in math over the year on addition and subtraction facts. The quizzes would be given randomly during the week and they would be timed! Karen has a hard time with her first quiz because she has to use her fingers to add and subtract, and misses half the questions because of the time limit. Later, when she goes to spend time at the Big House, David Michael secretly tells her that he is getting a tattoo, even though his parents forcefully tell him not to. When Karen receives the results to the quiz, she is disappointed because all her friends did better than her. She tells herself that she has to study the flash cards to be prepared for the next quiz, but she never ends up studying seriously. So, when Ms. Colman surprises the class with the next quiz, Karen doesn't know what to do, because she doesn't want to get a low grade again. So she decides to copy from Ricky Torres, who sits next to her, and who is very good in Math. When Hannie Papadakis sees Karen cheating off Ricky, Karen knows her friendship is in trouble with Hannie. If this wasn't bad enough, David Michael tells Karen that he got himself a tattoo, and Karen feels like she is now helping David Michael do something bad too. Karen realizes that she has to go on cheating and lying in her quizzes so that she doesn't get punished. Can she get out of trouble before it is too late? Review: I loved reading this book for the main reason of seeing how Karen reacts to cheating, and finds herself telling a bigger lie to cover up her other lies. I thought this book gave a very important message for children to not cheat from others, even if they are not prepared for something. Some parts of the book that I liked reading were: when Hannie tells Karen she saw her cheating; when Ms. Colman asks Karen if she was cheating and Karen tells her she didn't; and the climax to the book, which I won't give away here, but I thought it was a good ending to this story. The drawing provided by Susan Tang also added well to the story, and I enjoyed the ones where Andrew and Emily have tattoos drawn on them, or when Hannie sees Karen glaring at her in class for cheating. Overall, this is now one of my favorite books in the series, and I can't wait to read more.

karen learns that once you tell a lie you have to keep lying and you get yourself tangled in a mess that is very hard to get out of. Her class is having surprise math quizzes that are timed and karen can't handle them cause they are too fast for her and she keeps forgetting to study her flashcards at home so she cheats off ricky's math quiz and her marks get better but then when ms colman announces that the one with the best mark will win some free ice cream or something like that at mcdonalds karen feels guilty and confesses to the teacher that she cheated. Also karen admitted that she faked sick to skip a test and that she is hiding a secret that david michael got a tattoo though it's just from a cereal box and not a big deal.