I have loved this book since it first arrived in my Alaskan classroom via a Scholastic Book Order. The year was 1991, and this was hot off the presses. I had to have it. While I was always a reader, Avi made me fall in love with reading. Books such as The Man who was Poe, Blue Heron, and my favorite The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle brought more to my life than just a way to pass the time on a freezing island in the middle of the Bering Sea. It brought adventure, love, laughter. So much so that in 2018, I can still remember my first time cracking this book’s spine and reading it through in one sitting.

This book is about patriotism and the right to sing the national anthem in school. Or at least that is what you think it’s about. It has so much more between the pages. It’s about a boys relationship with his teacher. It’s about miscommunication, and that there is never just one or two sides to any story. It’s how even the smallest thing can get blown out of proportion and become something it was never meant to be.

This is at least my fourth reading of this book. I have read it with my kids book clubs twice. I have also had parents try to ban the reading of this book for being to political for children to handle. But it’s not. Its true and it’s real. Event today 27 years later it is relevant. Now as an adult I can see the sliding of history and the changing way we see things. Both from a childhood to an adulthood read, and a societal change.

There was this cartoon in some newspaper or journal that I wish I would have kept. It’s in two frames. In both frames there is a classroom, a teacher, a student, and a set of parents. In frame one the parents are standing behind the teacher talking to the child about what is going on at school and that things better shape up. In frame two, which is supposed to represent a new generation, the parents are standing behind the child and placing the blame on the teacher for bad grades,discipline problems, or whatever was happening. I was raised this way. Get in trouble in school, get it twice as bad at home. To me Nothing But The Truth shows how far back this switch between ideologies begins. A lot further back then I would have thought.

My favorite question to ask kids to think about as we read this book is “Who is to blame?” Is our main student Phillip to blame? Is it Miss Narwin? Is it the parents? Is it the lack of money at the school. So much to talk about. So much that is still true today. Schools still do not have enough money. People rally around news media stories that may only have one side. People do not always think to look at the other side, or when they do, it isn’t considered important. We live in the era of “fake news”. What is fake news. Is this book full of “fake news”?

There are parts of this book that ages the story. For example I’m not sure you can send an actual telegram anymore. But what would change today. Instead of a teleram, it would play out on social media. Maybe there would be Go Fund Me accounts set up for the parents, or the teacher to fight their side of the fight. The story and the themes found in this book are what make it current today. It’s “Documentary Novel” style seems odd to students, or a new fad if you have picked up Illuminae, or the Emoji stories. Without know how truely futuristic he was, Avi was writing a story of importance that resonates. If I was ever again to run into (literally) Avi in Wash Park (true story), I would love to pick his brain. How would he update his novel. How would he see this story 27 years later. Would he want to think about a modernization, or would it be just too depressing.

Luckily for the current generation of kids, Avi continues to write. He continues to spin tales tall and outrageous. Tales from history, that make you want to know more. And tales that will become classics that you are ecstatic to share and pass on for generations.

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