Al Capone Does My Shirts

Fiction by Gennifer Choldenko
Reviewed by Hillahn S.
1 available - check it out of the NVHS Library


Al Capone, machine Gun Kelly, and escapee Roy Gardner are not your normal neighbors. Not unless you are Moose Flanagan and his family. Moose’s dad was a great electrician and he competed with a lot of other men to get the job on Alcatraz Island. Moose and his mentally slow sister have the job of living on the concrete island and getting to know everybody. First they have to find a school for Natalie the sister and she can’t just go to any normal school. Natalie’s mind is still like a ten year old even though she is 16. Moses mother keeps making Natalie’s birthday her tenth one. When they do find a school for here she refuses to go and ends up howling the whole night causing her self to be expelled on her first day. Such is life with Moose Flanagan who also has to go to school and get on the baseball team and deal with the boss’s daughter Piper.

Piper is your average boss’s little bratty daughter. She gets Moose in trouble all the time for what she has done; she makes up moneymaking ideas that involve the convict’s names to get money. For example she made a sign that said “ Let Al Capone do your laundry, its only five cents!” Many kids bought the trick and Piper raised a lot of money. However when the Boss found out about it she blamed Moose and got him and his friends in trouble. Moose has bigger problems then that though to deal with. He has to find a school for Natalie so she can be taught and learn to be normal. A new school is opening that specializes in the case that Natalie has. Moose knows only one person who can help him get Natalie in. He writes a letter to Al Capone and Piper delivers it because she reads all the convicts mail. Then one day the family gets a call from the school saying that they have accepted Natalie into their program. Moose is ecstatic. Then one day as he is putting on a freshly cleaned shirt, a piece of brown paper falls out and all it says is “DONE.”

This book is a very good read and I would recommend it for any one. It’s a little hard to understand Natalie’s problem but at the end of the book you get what happened. It’s a simple 225-page book and its great for book reviews. Moose shows all the characteristic of a good brother standing up for his sister.