Enemy Pie was a very good book about a boy who is planning on having a wonderful summer. Everything is going right for him so far until one boy, Jeremy Ross, moved into town. Jeremy Ross had quickly become the boy’s worst enemy ever. He treated Jeremy poorly, like an enemy. The boy asked his father for advice about what to do with enemies. Because his father had experiences with enemies as a child, knew a how to get rid of them. His father’s ways of getting rid of enemies was called “ Enemy Pie”. This made the boy’s mind wonder about what could be so bad and nasty about Enemy Pie that it would get rid of an enemy forever.
He started thinking maybe he could make his hair fall out or make his breath stink. To get your enemy to eat enemy pie, you had to spend the entire day with the person and be nice to them like they weren’t your enemy. The boy hated the idea of having to spend the day with his enemy, but he decided that one day with his enemy was much better than having to deal with him for the rest of his life. He goes to Jeremy’s house and they start to play. After playing at Jeremy’s house for awhile they headed back to the boy’s house to play some more and to eat.
After supper the boy’s father brings out desert, which just happened to be the Enemy Pie. The thing was the boy had realized that Jeremy wasn’t actually that bad and that they had a lot of fun together. He actually didn’t consider him an enemy anymore. He warns Jeremy not to eat the pie because something bad might happen to him, but Jeremy noticed that the boy’s father has already eaten most of his piece of pie. The boy was confused, but they all started to eat the pie. It was very good and the enemy pie worked.
The boy had no clue how it worked or what was in the pie, but he had lost his best enemy and has gained a new friend. I enjoyed this book and feel that it would be a great book to read to students. It could be used for situations where you notice your students or children are making enemies with other students, perhaps bullying other students or being bullied, but also before you even notice anything happening as an act of prevention. What I really like about this story is that it shows how people can create false perceptions about how people really are based on what they currently know or a certain bias.
The boy saw that because he Jeremy laughed at him when he struck out and when he wasn’t invited to Jeremy’s party that it meant Jeremy didn’t like him. This could have been the reason behind Jeremy’s actions, but there are also other explanations of what it could have been. This kind of goes together with people shouldn’t always assume people are a certain way. I think a good lesson to teach at the end of the book could be something about teaching students to always be open to making new friends even if they don’t think they’ll like the person because in the long run you might actually have a lot more in common then you think.
I think that another lesson that the kids could learn from this is to get to know people before you judge them and stick them into a category such as enemy or friend. It sounds like the boy never really talked to Jeremy before he decided that they were enemies. He just assumed that Jeremy did not like him. In conclusion, this is a great book to teach children how to give everyone a chance at becoming friends and not to assume that somebody doesn’t like you because of the way that they acted.