Review by Catherine Amarachi -- Will of The Hill

[Maria-Goretti Amarachi Okechi - Catherine]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Will of The Hill" by Marshall Cobb.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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Will of The Hill by Marshall Cobb is a funny and enjoyable children's book that tells the story of a ten-year-old fifth grader named Will. This book is the first of its series. The story is set in a small town on the foot of a hill and a school on top of the hill.

The story revolves round the major character, Will and his best friend Dillon and their common enemy Gertrude. Gertrude was popularly known as Intrude because she is always intruding in somebody else's business. All three go to the same Hill school. Will and his best friend Dillon have common love for comic books and they both found girls to be disgusting. On the other hand, Gertrude is a spoilt child who is always telling on Will. She is equally a bully. In The Hill school, comic books are contrabands; but due to the love Will has for them, he brought them to school and concentrated more on hiding them from other students and teachers especially Ms. Early. To his great dismay, Gertrude found out about his comic book stash and threatened to report him to Ms. Early unless he was able to convince Dillon to come to her birthday party.

This novel is quite educative, in the sense that the author lays emphasis on laziness and its negative effects. This is portrayed in the way Will refuses to wash his plate after eating and also how dirty and smelly his room is. This attitude of his attracts bad comments from his parents, Dillon and even from Gertrude when she came to visit him.

This novel contains several themes concerning several challenges kids face in life such as school bullying, puberty, school life in general and life in a small town. For example, in respect to the theme of school life generally, we have characters like Ms. Early, Will's teacher, a woman who has no kid of her own and does not appear to like children. This is evident in her steady angry face and the way she speaks to Will including how she was always quick to allot punishments to Will for every slightest offence. I'm sure this will take any adult back to memory lane when we were all kids and had this particular teacher whom everyone feared and avoided.

This novel is an interesting read and will appeal most to middle-grade readers or children who are beginning to read little voluminous books. In this novel, most of the children are at that tender age just before puberty hits. Will in particular feels very disgusted at the thought of entering puberty as his brother had rightly pointed out that he would grow hairs in his armpits and will develop a body odor if he doesn't bath with shampoo and soap.

Though the book is for children, I would recommend it for parents because this book gives self help tactic to parents by talking about the feelings and the problems that their kids may likely be facing. Parents may get what they are missing about their kids who are in the transitional period of becoming a teenager.

Throughout the book, I found only few errors but they did not affect my understanding of the book. More so, there was no hindrance in the flow of thoughts. This first book is very enjoyable and the novel ended well, I believe that the following book in this series will also be very interesting. I am so glad to rate this book 4 out of 4 stars because I found the book very enjoyable and the few errors did not make me enjoy the book any less.

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Will of The Hill
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