While I indeed have enjoyed Rob Buyea's Because of Mr. Terupt to an extent, I also in no way will ever really love it. For although I can usually appreciate different viewpoints and voices being presented and depicted in a given narrative, there is for me simply "too much of a good thing" presented in Because of Mr. Terupt, as I really do find both the constant shifting of focus, the often extremely short length of many of the chapters and the sheer number of different viewpoints (with more than seven distinct voices) more than a bit distracting (and actually pretty darn annoying and frustrating at times).
Now if the individual chapters of Because of Mr. Terupt were rendered by Rob Buyea as being a bit longer, the different viewpoints would likely in my opinion be a bit easier to take, but as someone who has always had issues with distraction and a rather short attention span, I actually find it rather frustrating and majorly disconcerting that whenever I get to know one of the characters more intimately, the focus and the chapter seems to almost immediately change and switch. And for and to me personally, this type of novel format is therefore really and truly much too choppy and uneven (however, I actually do believe that Because of Mr. Terupt could probably work well enough for and with readers in the intended age group). And one further positive consideration is that the short chapters could make Because of Mr. Terupt a rather useful book to read aloud in class or for parents to read with and to their children (and especially children who are struggling or reluctant readers might benefit from this kind of a format, as the short chapters would make it easy to take a break from reading without losing the general thread and movement of the textual progression).
And yes, the presented characters encountered in Because of Mr. Terupt they do each of them have their unique enough voices and thoughts, but still, all of the seven featured students (and even Mr. Terupt as the teacher) are generally speaking also more or less still rather stock-like and thus a bit cardboard like as character types (the new girl, the mean girl, the ostracised girl, the fat girl, the prankster, the brainiac, the special needs students and so on and so on). And while I actually do not consider anything essentially wrong with this, if you approach Because of Mr. Terupt hoping for well developed and nuanced characters, you might well be a bit disappointed (and frankly, I do have to wonder whether the constant change of voice and focus also at least somewhat limits how developed the characters presented, the main seven students of Because of Mr. Terupt even can be, as there simply does not seem to be enough time and space for all that much character development to occur, to be shown).
And finally, although I do generally believe that the action and events depicted and presented in Because of Mr. Terupt are supposed to represent reality, I am finding it very frustratingly difficult to accept that after the accident, students are being shown by Rob Buyea as being allowed to visit Mr. Terupt in the hospital multiple times, and that the doctors actually tell some of them rather personal medical information about his past, something that for me feels really ludicrous and would probably even be possibly illegal. Thus, albeit I think that the beginning of Rob Buyea’s text is, in fact, quite realistic in scope and feel (and this even with the students and Mr. Terupt feeling more like representative tokens and more than rather stereotypical at times), the second part of Because of Mr. Terupt becomes, at least in my opinion, increasingly unrealistic, strange and quite unbelievable, and especially so with the hospital scenes. And yes, without these hospital scenes, and my by necessity suspension of reality, I probably would rate Because of Mr. Terupt with three stars, my own reading issues concerning too many voices and consequent distraction notwithstanding (but Rob Buyea’s depiction of the rather lax visitation rules at the hospital and the doctors basically and totally invading Mr. Terupt's privacy by telling some of the visiting students about his past issues with major head injuries, this leaves enough of a strange and disbelieving taste in my mouth, to only consider but two stars).