Space Station Seventh Grade

By: Jerry Spinelli

Narrated by: Johnny Heller

For Jason, entering the seventh grade is like walking into a dangerous new world. Now that he’s in junior high school, he’s a small fish in a big pond stocked full of ninth-graders. It’s so scary that he won’t even go to the bathroom if there’s a ninth-grader in there - no matter how badly he has to go! But it isn’t all bad. He’s working on a model space station in shop class, and he’s beginning to notice things he never paid attention to before, like body hair - and girls. Especially one girl: The beautiful, hair-flicking cheerleader Debbie Breen.

This wonderfully realistic audiobook, written by Newbery Award-winning author Jerry Spinelli, attracts teenaged listeners with its combination of honesty and embarrassingly funny situations familiar to every teenager. Johnny Heller captures Jason’s emotional roller coaster ride as his boggled mind tries to keep pace with his friends, family, school, and his changing body.

©1982 Jerry Spinelli (P)1998 Recorded Books

A little racist

We listened to this book on a family car trip. While the story is overall good for the middle school age group and adults certainly can relate to what the main character goes through, it should be noted that even for a book written in the early 1980's there was a lot of semi racist remarks or statements. Also a lot of not very feminist friendly terms and ideas are present. I think the book has merit but I think it needs to be explained to kids that the time book was written is different from now.