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Todos Los Santos Middle School is a chaotic Arizona educational institution where students spend more time filming online challenge videos and fighting each other than learning anything. George Shelf is a seasoned, grizzled security monitor doing his best to help these kids stay out of trouble and stop from attacking each other, within the confines of being a modern-day mediator for pre-teens. Every day is both an adventure and a nightmare filled with pranks, violence, immorality, immaturity, and the occasional heartwarming moment. George, known as Mr. George to the children, is often tasked with intervening or supporting them, although he has the experience to know when to step back and protect himself from the chaos or an angry parent.
George is a self-deprecating narrator, presenting as generally steadfast but not a hero or saint. He often tries to help the children or show them right from wrong, but he also has clear favorites based on observations of behavior and past conflicts. While it seems the brutish culture of Todos Los Santos can turn even its most gentle children into characters ripped from an inner-city Lord of the Flies, George recognizes the difference between a desperate measure and a recidivist habit. These stories encapsulate a single school year and pack enough drama and danger to send a more timid adult into therapy. Attending this school as either a student or a staff member requires tough skin and an even tougher interior. Whether it's a dedication to the next generation or simply a need for this and another job to get by, George finds the motivation to keep coming to work.
Painting a rather uncompromising, often unflattering look at the modern American public educational system and its student population, these snapshots and vignettes often seek the dark humor in situations that feel ripped from the headlines. Drug use, promiscuity, violence, social media addiction, and many other topics are not too taboo to get their own chapter in this book, and readers may find it hard to look at them through the lens of middle schoolers trying to be more grown-up than they are. But the sillier moments and the human element of Mr. George's narration and observation work to soften the blow somewhat and create a story that encourages the reader to find something within the situation to laugh about rather than cry.
The young characters that make up the bulk of this story are obvious exaggerations and characterizations of behaviors and trends, but their roots in reality make them feel surprisingly real. The reader is constantly pulled between a feeling of relief that this is a work of fiction and a sense that these situations are not entirely far-fetched. The overall tone of the story is satirical and dramatic, but it employs these tools not just to entertain but also to highlight the various problems facing today's children and the lack of support and guidance they receive. Beset by more than the usual social pressures of children that age, they must also deal with burgeoning identities, rampant capitalism, income inequality, and cyberbullying without an appropriate community of adults to teach them right from wrong. When George is called to intervene, he always does so knowing in the back of his mind how the legal system will punish him for overreaching his authority by even an inch. What readers will mainly take away from this story is an idea of just how much the staff of a school such as this is tasked with doing with so very little. Despite the shock and surprise at each new scandalous student's behavior, Mr. George and his peers try to maintain humanity and humility and keep a sense of humor.