Dave Packer's fifth-grade classmates are so boisterous and difficult to quiet down that the teachers have dubbed them "The Unshushables." Dave has just read about Mahatma Gandhi and learned that the man practiced silence one day a week to bring order to his mind. Though Dave likes to talk nonstop, he's determined to give the idea a try. An encounter with Lynsey, another chatterbox, sparks the boys and girls into challenging each other to a no-talking contest for 48 hours. They can answer direct questions from adults with three-word sentences but must otherwise remain silent. The teachers are bewildered at the extreme change in the kids until several of them figure out what's going on. Principal Hiatt demands that the quiet students return to their normal behavior. When the children continue with their silent ways, Dave finds himself at the center of the controversy. This is an interesting and thought-provoking book, similar to Clements's Frindle.
This book provides examples of:
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The adults who so dearly wish the fifth grade class would be quiet. Zigzagged, in that many of them do really appreciate and accept the new way of not-talking... but not Mrs Hiatt.
- Cool Teacher:
- Math teacher Ms. Marlowe and language arts teacher Mr. Burton pick up on the no talking experiment, view it with interest, and try to be supportive. Mr. Burton even adapts his whole class to accommodate it (although he also sees it as a great research opportunity).
- The flute teacher and karate sensei of two minor kids adapt quickly and calmly when they refrain from talking in their after-school lessons.
- Elective Mute: The no-talking contest consists of the characters choosing to not speak, though they can. Nodding, gesturing, tapping, poking, mouth sounds, tongue-clicking, lip popping, raspberries, animal sounds, writing notes, and sign language are all fair game, though.
- Extremely Short Timespan:The book takes place over seventy-three hours. It begins an hour before the school's Monday's lunch period and ends during Thursday's lunch period, at the end of the 48 hour no talking contest between boys and girls. Additionally, everything after Wednesday's lunch period is confined to the last chapter.
- Girls Have Cooties: Early in the book, they discuss how most people outgrow the idea of "cooties" by fifth grade... but some kids cling to cooties a little too long, and that the class in question is full of said kids.Of course, the fifth graders didn't actually use the word "cooties" anymore—that would have sounded like baby talk. They used words like "dumb" or "immature" or "annoying." But a cootie by any other name is still a cootie.
- It's Quiet… Too Quiet: Some adults have this reaction and are unnerved and annoyed by their Motor Mouth students becoming Elective Mutes.
- My God, What Have I Done?: In the penultimate chapter, Ms. Hiatt feels ashamed of herself for losing her temper and yelling at Kyle during his second day of being an Elective Mute. She apologizes to him and agrees to join the challenge herself.
