Al Capone Does My Shirts

Title: Al Capone Does My Shirts
Author: Gennifer Choldenko
From the Newbery Honor List

In my opinion, I would say that this would be a great book to get boys interested in reading in the classroom.  I remember when I was in elementary school all of the boys were fussing over Al Capone and they loved this book.  Reading it now, it is not one of my favorites, but I would still recommend it to young boys who might be interested in some historical fiction involving the big mob boss.  I thought the build up was slow and I did not find the story too exciting until almost three-forths of the way into it.  At that point I could not put the book down.  The story is about a boy and his family that move to the Alcatraz Island in San Francisco in the 1930's.  The boy's sister unfortunately has some mental disablities and at this point in history, this type of thing is not very well accepted.  His mother will do anything with the smallest possibility to make her daughter normal and keep her out of an asylum.  The main character loves his sister and is the best with her, but he also wants a normal life outside of the house.  I still wish the big mystery issue at the climax was explained more after.  I wonder about what happened to the young convict as well as Natalie, the sister.  I really did enjoy the second half of the book, even though the beginning was slow.