Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time by Lisa Yee

I finished Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time by Lisa Yee on Sunday morning while waiting for customers to show up (none did until late afternoon). It was another fun read for a long weekend of sitting around, but I read it right on the heels of Dairy Queen, so it seemed pretty fluffy in comparison. That’s OK, though. Some books are meant to be light, and some aren’t.

School Library Journal again:

From birth, when his father named him for his alma mater, great things have been expected from Stanford Wong. When his lack of interest in academics causes him to fail sixth-grade English and lands him in summer school, his star status on his school's basketball team is endangered. It is a summer of turmoil and family tension. Stanford's father is working longer and longer hours to try for a promotion, and a host of other changes are occurring. Stanford must come to grips with missing out on basketball camp, grit his teeth through tutoring sessions with Millicent the genius, see his beloved grandmother moved to an assisted-living facility, and try to hide his summer-school attendance from his buddies. His observations on his overachieving father and sister can be hilarious, and the loving close-up of his grandmother's dementia is wonderfully drawn.

The funny story about this book is that I acquired it through Bookmooch. No, that’s not the funny part. It’s that I requested the book sometime in early March, and the kind bookmoocher who was offering it put it in the mail right away. Media Mail.

If anyone is familiar with Media Mail, it is the cheapest way to send books. Before last week’s postage hike, you could send a book for about two dollars, and you could send an entire box of books for about five. However, you can never really be sure how long it will take to reach its destination, or that it will reach it at all. But sometimes, it takes only a few days to get across the country. You just never know.

Four weeks after she sent Stanford Wong, the bookmoocher emailed me to see if I had received it. Nope. Four weeks is not a good sign for Media Mail. I was pretty sure the book was lost in the mail. And then one day, my friend EJ called me to ask whether I wanted to meet up before Lisa Yee’s appearance in Walnut Creek that evening. I had totally forgotten about that, and I had no book.

I was not about to buy another copy of the book at Barnes and Noble, because, dammit, I had one coming to me. Maybe.

So I don’t know if Lisa Yee noticed, but when I introduced myself that evening, I did not ask her to sign a book for me. I felt sort of bad about that.

Three weeks later, Stanford appeared in my mailbox. Sometimes I just hate the post office.

Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time by Lisa Yee