Dear Mom, Get Me Out of Here!

By Ellen Conford

(1992) ISBN 0316153702

Paul Tanner’s parents have accepted a work position in Switzerland and in order to catch their plane, they drop Paul off at his new boarding school, Burnside Academy, without ever meeting with the headmaster.  They feel somewhat confident about the academic standing of the school inasmuch as Uncle Jack attended this institution thirty years prior and since Uncle Jack has achieved much and is in fact very prosperous.  Paul, however, quickly learns that relying solely on past conditions of institutions can be such a mistake.

At Burnside the food served to the students is atrocious, the plumbing leaves a great deal to be desired and that is just the beginning of the list of atrocious conditions that the Burnside boarding school students must face.  The school’s teachers do any thing but teach and the coaches are extraordinarily lacking in any athletic skills or ideas as to what is involved in athletics.

Paul finds that while his fellow students are very much academically challenged to begin with and not being helped scholastically due to the poor quality of the school’s faculty, the students have bonded and are quite co-operative with one another, and in fact are a good hearted lot.

So when Paul contacts his mother, via mail in this pre-cell phone era setting, and asks that his parents inspect the school, he has conflicting feelings about leaving.  Things have changed and he does not want to leave his new friends.  All that Paul and his school mates ever want is for the leadership of the school to be changed.  The readers of this very enjoyable book will have fun learning just how the creative lads at Burnside achieve this goal.