About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherNorton & Company, Incorporated, w. w.

ISBN-10132400360X

ISBN-139781324003601

eBay Product ID (ePID)16038806089

Product Key Features

Book TitleFree Lunch

Number of Pages208 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2019

TopicFamily / General (See Also Headings under Social Topics), School & Education, Social Topics / Homelessness & Poverty, Biography & Autobiography / General

GenreJuvenile Nonfiction

AuthorRex Ogle

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height0.9 in

Item Weight12.3 Oz

Item Length8.6 in

Item Width5.8 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceJuvenile Audience

LCCN2019-014202

Dewey Edition23

ReviewsOutstanding, gracious writing and a clear eye for the penetrating truth. A mighty portrait of poverty amid cruelty and optimism., With candor and vivid detail, Ogle's debut captures the experience of chronic poverty in the United States...Ogle's emotional honesty pays off in the form of complex characterization and a bold, compassionate thesis.

Grade FromSixth Grade

Grade ToNinth Grade

Dewey Decimal362.7092

SynopsisInstead of giving him lunch money, Rex's mom has signed him up for free meals. As a poor kid in a wealthy school district, better-off kids crowd impatiently behind him as he tries to explain to the cashier that he's on the free meal program. The lunch lady is hard of hearing, so Rex has to shout. Free Lunch is the story of Rex's efforts to navigate his first semester of sixth grade--who to sit with, not being able to join the football team, Halloween in a handmade costume, classmates and a teacher who take one look at him and decide he's trouble--all while wearing secondhand clothes and being hungry. His mom and her boyfriend are out of work, and life at home is punctuated by outbursts of violence. Halfway through the semester, his family is evicted and ends up in government-subsidized housing in view of the school. Rex lingers at the end of last period every day until the buses have left, so no one will see where he lives. Unsparing and realistic, Free Lunch is a story of hardship threaded with hope and moments of grace. Rex's voice is compelling and authentic, and Free Lunch is a true, timely, and essential work that illuminates the lived experience of poverty in America., Free Lunch is the story of Rex Ogle's first semester in sixth grade. Rex and his baby brother often went hungry, wore secondhand clothes, and were short of school supplies, and Rex was on his school's free lunch program. Grounded in the immediacy of physical hunger and the humiliation of having to announce it every day in the school lunch line, Rex's is a compelling story of a more profound hunger--that of a child for his parents' love and care. Compulsively readable, beautifully crafted, and authentically told with the voice and point of view of a 6th-grade kid, Free Lunch is a remarkable debut by a gifted storyteller.

LC Classification NumberHV741.O35 2019