The Handbook

The Handbook is an enthralling book by Jim Benton. Its argumentative teenage characters give the book a subtitle of No More Rules, which is exactly what the book is pointing toward. When a group of three teenagers, Maggie, Jack, and Mike, find a book with the front cover of a turnip recipe cookbook in the neighbor’s trash can, they find out that it’s more than just a worthless cook’s notebook. It holds secrets that tell them how to talk their parents into letting them do whatever they want. The kids start thinking that with no more rules, life will be easy and they will get to do anything they want. However, having the handbook leads to a lot of trouble for the kids. When an evil crew and a secret organization get involved, the teenagers aren’t so excited after all. I thought this book was incredibly interesting because of its great deal of action and drama. I liked how the chapters alternated among the three kids’ points of view to explain what each teenager thought. The characters are very believable and do things and make up excuses that real kids actually say. I would recommend this book for ages ten and up, because of the large amount of potty humor. There are a lot of funny situations that made me laugh out loud.