Pennington's Last Term (Pennington #1)

By: K. M. Peyton

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Synopsis: "Idle and destructive in class," his report card said. "Character and obedience unsatisfactory in the extreme." Under Music his teacher had written, "May God forgive this boy for abusing so unusual a talent." Aimless, insubordinate, a 196-pound hulk of a boy, Patrick Pennington had been committed (his own words) to a fifth year at Beehive secondary school. Now his last term still stretched before him, a prospect of unrelieved boredom and torment. "Soggy" Marsh, the sadistic form master, had given him two days to have his shoulder-length hair cut. The new police constable was out to get Penn into reform school. Even gentle Crocker, his piano teacher, seemed to be trying to break him. But out of Penn's bitterness and rage, there grows a sudden deep sense of himself as one day, in a piece of music, he finds an elation, a fierce and irrepressible pleasure. Scornfully rebelling against the arbitrariness of authority, against his parents, the law, and his teachers, Penn unexpectedly discovers in his own abilities a key to a meaningful life. Pennington's revolt against the hypocrisy of the adult world in which he must live will speak directly to all young readers. K. M. Peyton, the winner of the 1969 Carnegie Medal, has written a moving, powerful, and at the same time outrageously funny story about a very believable and very contemporary young man.