Someday Angeline

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Someday Angeline
Avon books 1st edition
First edition cover
Author Louis Sachar
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Young adult novel
Publisher Avon Books
Publication date 1983
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 154 pp (first edition, paperback)
ISBN ISBN 0-380-83444-8 (first edition, paperback)

Someday Angeline is a children's novel by Louis Sachar. The story about a girl named Angeline Persopolis who faces trouble at school because of her intelligence, it was originally released in 1983, but received a reprint in 2005 following Sachar's success with Holes.

Angeline is extremely intelligent, because she knew things, especially related to fish and the ocean, "before she was born." Even though she is only eight, she is sent to the sixth grade. She wants to be a garbage collector like her father, although he wants her to become famous and is afraid of her intelligence at times. At school she also faces problems, bullied by the other students and misunderstood by her teacher, Mrs. Hardlick. Her only two friends are a fifth grade teacher, Miss Turbone (also known as Mr. Bone) and Gary Boone (who later gets a book to himself, Dogs Don't Tell Jokes).

Mr. Persopolis wants the best for his daughter, and he often pushes her too hard to achieve. When she is elected Secretary of Trash, he becomes angry and orders her to resign. The next day at school, Mrs. Hardlick does not listen to Angeline when she tries to resign, and Angeline is so frustrated that she messes up the classroom, denouncing everything as "Garbage!" Mrs. Hardlick is furious and tells Angeline to not come back without a signed note from her father. For the next week she goes to the aquarium each day, instead of going to school. Her father gets home after she does, so he does not know.

When Miss Turbone finds out about this, she arranges to talk with Mr. Persopolis (it is implied that the two fall in love when they meet ). They decide Angeline will be transferred to Miss Turbone's fifth grade class, and that she will return to Mrs. Hardlick's class for a day or two while the transfer is arranged. They also plan to go on a date the next evening.

However, Mrs. Hardlick succeeds in alienating Angeline one more time, and she once more runs away from school, this time to the beach, where she jumps off the pier (the better to see the fish) and nearly drowns. However, she is saved by a fisherman and later gets completely better.

The newer cover for Sachar's Someday Angeline.
The newer cover for Sachar's Someday Angeline.