In an empty fishbowl far far away there once was a dead fish. Was this Ellray’s fault? Read Ellray Jakes walks the plank to find out. The author’s name is Sally Warner. This book is a good series. The main characters are EllRay, a nine year old boy, and Cynthia, a nine year old girl. The main problem is that EllRay is irresponsible and Cynthia is mean. EllRay, the main character, is trying not to mess up as much because he messes up most of the time he is in school. Cynthia, the other character, is trying to be nicer to EllRay and everyone else in their class. This story takes place at Ellray Jakes’ house on Saturday morning.  This book also takes place at his school on Monday morning. The story takes place in the present.

Ellray Jakes is interesting because he is funny and he is also mindful about other people.  Ellray is funny because he makes up jokes with his friends and makes them laugh. He is also mindful because at one point in the book, he was responsible for bringing a book back from his house. He forgot the book at his house and he felt bad because the rest of his class was reading the book too and they couldn’t because he forgot it.  

Cynthia is also interesting because she is not so nice.  She blames stuff on EllRay, and that’s why he keeps getting in trouble.  One time the class was playing a tag game, and EllRay had to stand still because he got tagged.  When he tried to tag her, he accidentally grabbed her skirt and made her fall backwards because she yanked it out of EllRay’s hand. Cynthia got EllRay in trouble with the teacher.

EllRay has one big problem and that is how his class fish died, when he was supposed to take care of it for spring break. The reason why it died was because Ellray let his little sister put fish food in the fish tank. Then she put too much food in the tank, and the fish ate the food until it died from eating too much. When the fish ate the food, Ellray was sleeping because it was time for him to go to bed. The problem was that because EllRay messed up so much, he knew that no one would believe that it wasn’t him that killed the fish.

One event that changed the direction of the story was when Cynthia started to become nice.  The reason why she was starting to be nice was because she noticed that EllRay was getting in trouble so much because of her.  So, she stopped trying to get him in trouble.

I enjoyed the book because I thought it had a good setting. I liked that it took place mostly at school because it made the story seem more realistic. It was like it could happen in real life.  I also enjoyed this book because it was interesting how Cynthia kept getting EllRay in trouble, and it seemed like EllRay had trouble defending himself. I would recommend this book to 4th graders and 3th graders. I think that this book is funny because it has good jokes. If I had to rate this book from one star to five stars I would say would say five stars. *****