Zero to Hero by Henry Winkler & Lin Oliver

Billy Broccoli moves into a new house with his mother and new stepfather and stepsister in Zero to Hero by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver (Lexile: 800; Reading Level: Grades 3-5).  This move means that he has to start a new school and make new friends.  As nervous as that makes him, it doesn't help that his new next door neighbor is a bully who fancies himself a crime-fighter (spying on everyone in the neighborhood and calling the police when he sees anything wrong, including being a centimeter outside of a parking line).  And to make matters even worse, he has to share his pink and purple rainbow room with a ghost.


In this first book of the new Ghost Buddy series, Henry Winkler introduces us to an unlikely friendship between two very different boys (as different as life and death) who must figure out how to help each other to become better than they are alone.  This book was an easy, enjoyable read, in which the characters are real with well-fleshed out (okay, so maybe one doesn't have so much flesh) personalities.  I think many students will enjoy the story of this book, as well as the lesson about how to deal with bullies that the boys figure out on their own.

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