Al Capone Shines my Shoes
Written by Gennifer Choldenko
Review by Isabella
The realistic fiction story of the book Al Capone Shines my Shoes is about 12 year old Moose that lives on Alcatraz Island with some famous criminals like Al Capone, Willy One Arm, and Buddy Boy.Al Capone Shines my Shoes is the sequel to Al Capone Does my Shirts and in Al Capone Does my Shirts, Moose talks to Al Capone to see if he could help get Moose’s sister, Natalie, who has special needs, into a school that can help her with her disabilities. The school rule says that you can only get into the school if you are at least younger than 12 years old. Nat (Natalie’s nickname) is 16 so she can’t get in. For this reason, Moose sends Al Capone a note. Moose asks Capone if he could write a letter to Natalie’s school asking them to please take Natalie even though she’s 16. Moose gets a note in his laundry (because the criminals do everybody’s laundry) saying done and then not soon after, Nat’s school finally agrees to take her and now everything is fine and dandy. Until… In Al Capone Shines my Shoes, Al sends a note to Moose through the laundry asking if he could get his wife who is coming to visit him, some yellow roses and then they’re square. Moose is kind of nervous about doing it because he doesn’t really want to help a bad guy out but then again, that bad guy did get his sister into school so doesn’t he owe him? Then his dad tells him to never do anything good for the criminals because then they have something on you. For example, if Capone shines my shoes, he can make me do anything he wants because he can threaten me by saying that he’ll tell the warden that he shines my shoes so now I do the next thing he wants and next thing you know he’s got two things on you and it keeps going on and on. He doesn’t know if he should gat the roses or not. Than, the warden’s wife is going to have a baby but then she gats sick and nobody knows if she is going to pull through. Everyone is nice t o the warden’s daughter, Piper, but she isn’t nice back. Piper also always asks Moose to help her with her troublesome schemes and Moose always does get involved, then gets in usually trouble for it.Then, there is a jailbreak and all the kids in the island are involved in it! The warden has two criminals working in his home named Willy One Arm and Buddy Boy and they take hostage of the children when everyone else on the island are at a party. What will happen? Will the kids escape? Read the awesome book of Al Capone Shines my Shoes to find out! As you can probably guess, Moose is a strong main character. He loves and stands up for Natalie when other kids make fun of her. He can handle more stress that a typical 12 year old should have and he trys to be a normal kid even though he lives an a rock and knows Al Capone. I liked this book because I liked to read about the problems Moose faces with his sister, friends, and more. I also liked to hear what a pretty normal day was like for a 12 year old in 1935 (even though Moose isn’t on some standards considered normal). In general, I liked hearing about what life was like living on Alcatraz Island with a sister that has special needs and a girl that always gets in trouble and always asks you to help her.

In summary, Al Capone Shines my Shoes is a must read book!