Al Capone Does My Shirts
Fiction
By Gennifer Choldenko
Reviewed by Hillahn S.
5 out of 5 Stars
Al Capone, machine Gun Kelly, and escapee Roy Gardner are not your normal neighbors. Not unless you are Moose Flanagan and his family. Moose’s dad was a great electrician and he competed with a lot of other men to get the job on Alcatraz Island. Moose and his mentally slow sister have the job of living on the concrete island and getting to know everybody. First they have to find a school for Natalie the sister and she can’t just go to any normal school. Natalie’s mind is still like a ten year old even though she is 16. Moses mother keeps making Natalie’s birthday her tenth one. When they do find a school for here she refuses to go and ends up howling the whole night causing her self to be expelled on her first day. Such is life with Moose Flanagan who also has to go to school and get on the baseball team and deal with the boss’s daughter Piper.
Piper is your average boss’s little bratty daughter. She gets Moose in trouble all the time for what she has done; she makes up moneymaking ideas that involve the convict’s names to get money. For example she made a sign that said “ Let Al Capone do your laundry, its only five cents!” Many kids bought the trick and Piper raised a lot of money. However when the Boss found out about it she blamed Moose and got him and his friends in trouble. Moose has bigger problems then that though to deal with. He has to find a school for Natalie so she can be taught and learn to be normal. A new school is opening that specializes in the case that Natalie has. Moose knows only one person who can help him get Natalie in. Find out how the rest of this novel plays out in laundry and baseball and Natalie’s schooling.
This book is a very good read and I would recommend it for any one. It’s a little hard to understand Natalie’s problem but at the end of the book you get what happened. It’s a simple 225-page book. Moose shows all the characteristics of a good brother standing up for his sister.
