Nutty for President

I like quite a bit of Dean Hughes' work in the way of children's books, and I especially like his funny and popular series of books on Frederick "Nutty" Nutsell, a fifth-grader at a university laboratory school in Kansas City, Missouri. This was the first "Nutty" book, published in 1981, and I can see that this wasn't planned to be a complete series. Apparently, this book sold well enough that Dean Hughes decided to capitalize on that success and write another one, and then another one, and then another, until finally there were eight books in all and, sadly, that was it. In this story, Nutty Nutsell and his friends begin a big campaign for Nutty to become the new student council president. Nutty's campaign manager, William Bilks, is a true boy genius but unfortunately in this book he is not shown in such a good light because he is credited with getting Nutty into trouble in the way of promises that he couldn't keep, lying that he wanted a career as a comedian, etc., etc. However, William Bilks is my favorite character (Nutty seems like too much of a screw-up and all his best friends, especially Orlando Ortega, are just plain jerks) and I think he doesn't get the credit he deserves. Nutty lets him do his thinking for him. William is brilliant, he has good ideas, he seems like a nice guy . . . he just makes the mistake of causing a bit of trouble for Nutty. William ends up getting thrown out of the lab school but then he gets to go to a private school and take college classes in the evenings, which is good. "Nutty for President" is one of the best children's chapter books I've ever read, and I've read a lot of them. I especially like the comical look at school politics, and I just laugh at William's great ideas and suggestions, like making Nutty a comedian and even arranging for an article on Nutty the comedian to appear in the local newspaper. I don't really approve of the message of the book, however. It is as if the author is trying to say that Nutty should do some thinking for himself, which is a good message, however the author also hints around at the lie that it's all William's fault. William is just a genius, an extremely smart boy who is misplaced temporarily, that's all. Great book. Four out of five. My favorite part: When William devises all of the plans and publicity stunts for the campaign, such as making Nutty a comedian, arranging for an article about Nutty in the local newspaper, staging a fight between Nutty and an older boy to make Nutty look like a hero, and, of course, Nutty's great speech. I also like the many references to Kansas City, which will always be one of my favorite communities, although it has fallen on some hard times in these past twenty or thirty years.