14. The Dunderheads

The Dunderheads by Paul Fleischman illustrated by Davis Roberts (Candlewick Press, 2009)

Genre

Picture Book/Heist

Review

The Dunderheads follows a group of uniquely talented children who appear to be of approximately middle school age.  Their teacher Ms. Breakbone confiscates a cat figurine from Theodore (aka Junkyard) and sets into motion an elaborate heist.  Breakbone is known to sell off the confiscated goods, and Junkyard had planned to give the cat to his mother for her birthday.  Each child plays a special role: Einstein has an uncanny ability for planning; to retrieve her address, Wheels tails Breakbone home on his bicycle and he later operates the get away bicycle; Pencil has a photographic memory and artistic talent; Spider can climb quickly; etc.  On the night of the heist Ms. Breakbone is having a party which complicates matters.  The group has to rely on the talents of all ten members of the team. 

Opinion

Much of the fun is derived from seeing each child use their talents in unique and startling ways.  Giving away all of the talents would be giving away too much of the fun.  The book also does a nice job of subverting some common middle school assumptions: each child is valued for what makes them unique, not labelled as weird.  The children form a partnership based upon their differences and individual strengths.  The illustrations by David Roberts are appealing; by making the group look older and making each individual child unique, he ensures that older children will enjoy the book and not dismiss it as a picture book for babies.

Ideas

The book's art style is so compelling that one fun use of the book might be to create a program wherein the book is used as inspiration for tweens to create their own heist story.  The narrative is so simple that it wouldn't be difficult to replicate; but because the events hinge upon the talents of the children, it would also be easy to personalize.  You could ask the children to draw on the unique talents of their friends and classmates or to invent some unique talents.  The stylized art style could also encourage children to try their hand at drawing.  Used in a middle school setting, the book could also encourage students to see one another's differences as benefits not oddities; for this reason the book also makes it into my (imaginary) Middle School Survival Kit.