The Strange Case of Origami Yoda

Author: Tom Angleberger
Illustrator: Tom Angleberger and Jason Rosenstock

© Date: 2010
Publisher: Amulet Books
Pages: 141
Chapters: Yes
Illustrations: Yes, most pages have small doodle-like illustrations
Publisher Recommended Age: 8-12
Bonus Activities at End of Book: Yes, how to fold your own origami Yoda

Summary from Book: It takes the wisdom of Yoda to survive the sixth grade.

Meet Dwight, a sixth-grade oddball. Dwight does a lot of weird things, like wearing the same T-shirt fora month or telling people to call him “Captain Dwight.” This is embarrassing, particularly for Tommy, who sits with him at lunch every day.

But Dwight does one cool thing. He makes origami. One day he makes an origami finger puppet of Yoda. And that’s when things get mysterious. Origami Yoda can predict the future and suggest the best way to deal with a tricky situation. His advice actually works, and soon most of the sixth grade is lining up with questions.

Tommy wants to know how Origami Yoda can be so smart when Dwight himself is so clueless. Is Yoda tapping into the Force? It’s crucial that Tommy figure out the mystery before he takes Yoda’s advice about something VERY IMPORTANT that has to do with a girl.

This is Tommy’s case file of his investigation into “The Strange Case of Origami Yoda.”

Page Pig Thoughts: Never having been a sixth-grade boy, this felt like a decent glimpse into the experience of a sixth-grade boy. That experience includes desperately wanting to be cool, wanting to be liked by your peers, liking a girl but not knowing what to do about it, but mostly, not wanting others to make fun of you. Those issues are not entirely unique to a sixth-grade boy, but how they are experienced is unique.

The format of this book was noteworthy because most of the chapters are letters submitted from different characters on experiences that they had with Origami Yoda. Which translates to lots of perspectives and ideas, which kept things interesting, but also meant that I was challenged at times to remember who everyone was. The girls blended together a bit in my head, but some of the nuances of the boys also blended together a bit as well. The format was a fun way to add to the mystery of Origami Yoda, but I particularly liked that there was no clear answer in the end. The readers can decide how they interpret the case facts. Maybe Origami Yoda is magic, maybe he is not. But Origami Yoda did leave a lot of kids happy and having fun at a middle school dance, that is no small feat.

I would read more of these books, but would also be okay not reading more of them. If I were a middle school kid, maybe I would feel differently.

Family Unit: Families were not really discussed, this focused on the school experience. Tommy, Harvey, Kellen, and Dwight sit together at lunch. Sara, Rhondella, and Amy sit together. Cassie is new and hasn’t made particular friends yet.

Conflict/Social Issues:

Tommy likes Sara, but is afraid to ask her to dance. He is afraid that she will say no and his friends, and everyone else, will make fun of him.
Dwight is a unique boy that does things his own way, but garners a lot of attention from all sorts of kids at school when he starts wearing an Origami Yoda finger puppet all the time and giving out advice as Origami Yoda. Some kids think that Origami Yoda is magical, some kids think that he is a wad of paper and Dwight is dippy.
Dwight physically attacks a boy because that boy broke a girl’s pencils. He was trying to make things right for the girl, but put himself in a position to be beat up by a much larger boy.
Tommy, Harvey, and Kellen struggle with Dwight sitting at their lunch table because he is annoying. They fear that others will not look favorably upon them as a result.

Positive Items:

Different kids explain their experiences with Origami Yoda. After their explanation, Harvey makes comments because he does not believe in Origami Yoda. Then Tommy comments on each story because he is trying to make sense of everything. I like that the reader can read each Origami Yoda experience and evaluate the information for themself with the pro/con comments at the end.
We see that sometimes leaving your comfort zone works out in the end. Which made me wonder what we would all do if we were not afraid of being made fun of in middle school, maybe some good stuff, maybe some stuff that we would still be embarrassed about…
Tommy is not always kind to Dwight, but he does regret it. He just does not always know how to make things right again because apologizing is not his specialty.

Items of Interest:

Tommy was about to ask Hannah to dance at the start of the book, but delays because Origami Yoda makes him pause. A seventh-grader comes over, Hannah rushes to him, and they start kissing each other.
Dwight creates his own way to make an Origami Yoda finger puppet and proceeds to walk around school with it on his finger all the time. Since he does things his own way, that would not stand out, except for the fact that he started giving out advice as Origami Yoda. The advice that is given does not seem to coincide with who Dwight is as a person.
Origami Yoda helps one kid survive the dilemma of his wet pants looking like he wet himself and another getting over crying at PE softball.
Harvey asks Lance to sit at their lunch table so that Dwight will have to sit somewhere else. Kellen, Harvey, and Tommy decide to take a vote on whether Dwight should still be allowed to sit at their table. Kellen votes in favor of Dwight and Tommy decides to side with Harvey and votes against Dwight. Lance finds all of them annoying and leaves the table so Dwight can sit down. Tommy then feels badly for how he treated Dwight.
Cassie accidentally breaks a teacher’s Shakespeare statue. She is afraid that she will get in trouble, so she hides the pieces in her backpack and takes them home. Dwight sits next to her on the bus and points out that trying to cover up her issues is a worse crime that accidentally breaking something. Cassie winds up taking her own statue to school the next day and apologizing to the teacher who appreciates her offering.
An eighth-grader tries to learn the winning spelling bee word but winds up losing. So it would seem Origami Yoda does not go for cheating. However, another time, Origami Yoda tells a few kids about an upcoming pop quiz so they could all study and do well.
If kids are not kind to Dwight and call him names or act rude, he is not inclined to let them ask Origami Yoda questions.
Through Quavondo’s story, we see the effects of an innocent dilemma of not wanting to entirely waste your money or being able to share with everyone. He makes the rush decision to shove a whole bunch of Cheetos in his mouth, then is made fun of for years for his desperation move. He acts on Origami Yoda’s advice so he can finally move past his nickname. The advice has him spend $63 on bags of Cheetos (including $50 of his birthday money), secretly bringing the Cheetos to school (hard because 116 bags of Cheetos to cover the whole sixth grade takes up a lot of volume), then running through the hallway to assembly to quickly hand out the bags. He gets an in-school suspension and had to write an apology note to the assembly speaker (his parents have to sign the letter). Despite most of the Cheetos getting thrown away and his money wasted, he says it was worth it because nobody really calls him Cheeto Hog anymore.
Dwight has lots of unsigned in-school suspension slips in his backpack.
Caroline is a seventh grade girl that wears hearing aids and reads lips. The school’s oversized bully had broken all of her pencils that her grandmother had just given her. She asks Origami Yoda’s advice, but Dwight says that he will take care of it. The collected facts indicate that Dwight jumped out from behind a trash can and attacked the bully, then got clobbered. Dwight got suspended for a week and a bruise under his right eye. The bully only got one afternoon in in-school suspension because Dwight started it.
Tommy gets mad that Dwight won’t let Origami Yoda give him advice. Dwight was upset that Tommy called him a loser, so Dwight throws away Origami Yoda. Maybe Tommy is upset that he won’t get anymore advice or maybe he just feels bad about being rude, but he takes Origami Yoda from the trash, tries to wipe off the baked beans and refold him.
Harvey then makes his own Origami Yoda. He says it is far superior because it looks more like Yoda and he does a better Yoda voice impression. However, since he never believed in Origami Yoda, he does not give good advice.
Tommy is left at the dance trying to decide if he should stay safe and act on Harvey’s Yoda advice to not ask Sara to dance, or if he should take Dwight’s Yoda advice and ask Sara to dance. To risk being made fun of to follow his heart is a big quandary. In the end, almost like an Origami Yoda miracle, Sara did want to dance with Tommy.
Was Origami Yoda magical? Maybe so because a whole bunch of sixth graders were able to leave their watching spots, act on their desires, and dance with the people that they wanted to dance with. Many kids had fun as the result of a finger puppet, so maybe it doesn’t matter if the advice was Dwight’s or not.

Other Books in Series (At Time of Posting):

Darth Paper Strikes Back (Book 2)
The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee (Book 3)
The Surprise Attack of Jabba the Puppett (Book 4)
Princess Labelmaker to the Rescue! (Book 5)
Emperor Pickletine Rides the Bus (Book 6)
Also of interest: ART2-D2’s Guide to Folding and Doodling