Author: Michael Gerard Bauer
Genre: Fiction
Audience: Young Adult
Format: Book - library
From Goodreads: There's no easy way to put this, so I'll say it straight out. It's time I faced up to the truth. I'm fourteen years old and I have Ishmael Leseur's Syndrome. There is no cure. And there is no instant cure to not fitting in. But that won't stop Ishmael and his intrepid band of misfits from taking on bullies, bugs, babes, the Beatles, debating, and the great white whale in the toughest, the weirdest, the most embarrassingly awful...and the best year of their lives.
What I thought: I didn't intend to read this so quickly after reading Hoops of Steel, but as it happened I forgot to take my book to work and so I pulled this off the shelves to have something to read during lunch.
Don't call me Ishmael takes us back to year 9 at St Daniel's and the beginning of Ishamael's stunning career as a debator and admirer of Kelly Faulkner. What I am really enjoying about this series is it portrays teenage boys as something other than meat head sports players or geeky outsiders. I believe in Ishmael and his friends. They are a mixed bunch drawn together through debating, but they are what I imagine the vast majority of kids in high school are like. Bauer is easy to read, entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable.