Review: Sidney and Sydney: Third Grade Mix-Up by Michele Jakubowski (ARC)

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Sidney and Sydney: Third Grade Mix-Up. by Michele Jakubowski. February 1, 2013. Capstone. 128 pages. ISBN: 9781404881044

When you’re a kid, there is nothing stranger than the first time you meet another kid with your same name. For third-grader Sidney Fletcher, it’s really weird because Sydney Greene, his classmate, is a girl who shares his name. After a mix-up with the seating arrangement on the first day of school, though, the two become friends, bonding over their mutual love of a game called Galaxy Conquest and working together to solve a problem preventing their friends from enjoying Halloween.

The premise for this book is perfect. Many kids - especially those with common and popular names - go to school with other kids with their same name, and they have to find unique ways to identify themselves on paper and in discussion to keep their classmates and teacher from getting confused. This is something kids can relate to, whether they share their name with someone they know or not. For third graders, the notion that someone could share her name with a boy would be mind-blowing, and this book uses that sense of surprise as a good starting point for the story.

Unfortunately, for a story entitled Third Grade Mix-Up, it doesn’t deal very much with the mix-up at all. Yes, there is a brief moment early in the book on the first day of school, when there is some confusion about their names, but it’s all cleared up rather quickly, and the focus shifts instead to Halloween. The problem with Halloween is that Sydney’s best friend Harley can’t have candy because her family isn’t eating junk food and Sidney’s new friend Gomez can’t have candy because he’s diabetic. Sydney and Sidney don’t want their friends to be sad on Halloween, so they look for ways to celebrate that don’t involve sweets.

This storyline is interesting and probably should have been the central focus of the entire book, but instead, it doesn’t even start to unfold until the story is half over. I don’t feel like I ever had a true sense of what this book is about. Is it to show that a boy and a girl can be friends? There is no real, lasting conflict between Sidney and Sydney to begin with, so it’s not a big shock that they can get along as friends. The story just seems like a bunch of random events strung together to show how cute it is when two friends with the same name come together. And while the writing is good, and the reading level appropriate for new chapter book readers, there just isn’t enough substance to the story to keep a reader engaged.

For a story about similar subject matter with a more discernible plot, try the Just Grace series by Charise Mericle Harper.

I received a digital ARC of Sidney and Sydney: Third Grade Mix-Up from Capstone via NetGalley. 

For more about this book, visit Goodreads and Worldcat.