Identical twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield are about the say good-bye to sixth grade—forever! But it's not over yet...
Jessica and her friends are psyched to spend one of their last weeks as sixth graders working at the mayor's special Outreach Fair. But volunteering isn't as easy as it looks. Lila Fowler thinks a job at the mayor's office will be glamourous—little does she know! Jessica can't wait to teach health classes to a group of first graders... until those adorable kids turn into monsters! And Elizabeth, busy at work in a soup kitchen, stumbles upon a mystery! Can the SVMS volunteers pull it all together before everything falls apart?
Francine Paula Pascal was an American author best known for her Sweet Valley series of young adult novels. Sweet Valley High, the backbone of the collection, was made into a television series, which led to several spin-offs, including The Unicorn Club and Sweet Valley University. Although most of these books were published in the 1980s and 1990s, they remained so popular that several titles were re-released decades later.
The principal decrees a requirement for all sixth grade students to do volunteer work.
Wait a minute. How can you 'require' someone to do 'volunteer' work? Volunteer means you do something voluntarily. The two are mutually exclusive of each other.
Anyhow, that's what's done at the school. There's a bunch of different things to 'volunteer' for. The job that you end up with is written on a card and distributed randomly which totally ignores whether or not the person that ends up with the card has any interest in or experience with what job they end up with.
Not the smartest way to do things to put it mildly. Elizabeth ends up helping at a soup kitchen and, thanks to Lila, has $200 to donate to them. Jessica ends up helping at a health station to teach really young kids about the heart and lungs.
One thing that is majorly upsetting is Jessica's attitude towards those who go to the soup kitchen. She says 'People who go to soup kitchens are nuts-everybody knows that.'
Had soup kitchens never been discussed in her history class, especially in relation to the Great Depression?
There's also a theme about a young man who had been in legal trouble and has tried to change his life around but, again thanks to Jessica, things may go bad for him.
Things work out all right, of course, but I would have liked to have seen something added maybe at the end of the book to point out how helpful soup kitchens have been especially to those who, through no actual fault of their own, don't have the money to but food.
I like how the story turns out but Jessica's attitude is quite disturbing.