The Broken Bike Boy and the Queen of 33rd Street

by Sharon G. Flake

Book Overview

Ten-year-old Queen, a spoiled and conceited African American girl who is disliked by most of her classmates, learns a lesson about friendship from an unlikely "knight in shining armor." This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1423100352
• ISBN13: 9781423100355
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Jump at the Sun
• Length: 138 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.2" x 7.5"
• Age Range: 8 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 7

Customer Reviews

Courtesy of Teens Read Too

Queen is an incredibly stuck up ten-year-old girl whose family's praise has given her a very high opinion of herself. Her father and older brothers have spoiled her to the point where she's very, very easy to dislike. Unsurprisingly, no one at school seems to appreciate or recognize her supposed superiority. Leroy is a new boy in her class, who smells funny and whose bike is broken. Queen is sure that he's a liar, especially when he tells stories about being royalty from Africa, and she can't stand him. Her parents try to force her to be nice to him, so they are thrown together despite Queen's dislike. Through Leroy, Queen learns some important lessons. She's still not a very likeable heroine, though. I don't think I was supposed to like her. Be prepared for that going into this book, and you'll be able to appreciate Sharon G. Flake's amazing (and unsurprising if you've read her previous books) talent. I'm not sure how kids will feel about this book. Some of them may not be willing to read a book with a main character like Queen. But if they can give it a shot, it's a pretty enjoyable short novel. Reviewed by: Jocelyn Pearce

Queen for a day (give or take a decade)

I'm probably the laziest person I know when it comes to reviewing books. I'm okay on the reading part, and I'm just ducky at putting a book in my To Be Reviewed Pile. It's at the point when the book merges with the general pile that I tend to get distracted, though. Books get seriously frighteningly buried. I guess that's the danger with a vertical rather than a horizontal pile. Then the mediocre books begin to disappear from my mind. I forget their details and their characters. I can't conjure up a notable scene or moment from them, and then the end of the year rolls around and it's too late to review them anyway. Once in a great while, however, I'll bury a book deep down into my pile and it'll remain in my brain for months on end. Today's example of this is Sharon G. Flake's, "The Broken Bike Boy and the Queen of 33rd Street". I read this book so long ago that I've no clear-cut memory of the time or season anymore. Yet when I plucked it up just now it was if I'd finished it in its entirety only yesterday. Until this book the only Flake title I'd ever read was the mighty YA, Who Am I Without Him?. "Broken Bike Boy", then, proves that Flake's talent for switching genres is rivaled only by her strong characterizations. It's enough to drive even the most superior member of the royal family bonkers. Queen knows that she's smart. Her father and her older brothers tell her every single day, and she loves correcting her teacher whenever she has the chance. That the kids in her school don't immediately recognize her innate superiority would be tolerable if they didn't all go and actually like nasty old Leroy instead. Leroy stinks and he lies. He says he's royalty from Africa, and Queen seems to be the only kid in her class that can see through his lies. Yet somehow this nasty boy has managed to charm everybody. Her teacher. Her parents. Her classmates. Everyone! But Queen's attempts to get at the truth behind Leroy's past teaches her a thing or two about what it truly means to be royal and, more importantly, a good person in this life. At first when I was reading this book, I was ... well, basically I read this book like a kid would. I really did NOT like silly stuck-up Queen and I was feeling more than a little mad at Ms. Flake for forcing her upon me. I mean, this is a gal doted upon by her father and all her brothers. When one of them sends her a present she recounts how, "Then like always, he told me how much he loved me. Right after that I called my other brothers, to see what they would send me." ARG! Tell me that doesn't make you feel just a little crazy. Spoiled kids make for frustrating if intense reading. I'm ashamed to say that I was probably halfway through the book before it occurred to me that maybe you weren't supposed to like Queen. Maybe that was kind of the point. I've been so used to reading characters like Ida B from the novel of the same name that I had difficulty recognizing when I was supposed