There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom

“Claudia snickered. Although she always made fun of Bradley’s animals, she had really felt bad when she stepped on the rabbit. She knew it was Bradley’s favorite. She had bought him the bear to make up for it.”

Claudia antagonizes her little brother, but she also cares about him. After she steps on Ronnie’s ear, she gives him Bartholomew the Bear. She understands the animal objects represent his community, so she adds to his support group.

“Deep down, he really is a good boy.”

Janet, Bradley’s mom, says this to Mrs. Ebbel. The reader might dismiss Janet’s statement as something any parent would say—no parent wants to think their child is irredeemably bad. Yet future events turn Janet’s statement into foreshadowing. It previews the good inside Bradley—the good that Carla helps him display.

“THERE’S A BOY IN THE GIRLS’ BATHROOM!”

Colleen’s scream gives the book its title, and Sachar emphasizes her shock by making all the letters upper case. The quote works literally and figuratively. There is really a boy (Jeff) in the girls’ bathroom. Symbolically, it shows how easy it is to break norms and rules. As the characters learn, what’s accepted as “normal” and acceptable is regularly on the move.

“Sitting two tables away from Jeff and Bradley were three girls; Melinda Birch, Lori Westin, and Colleen Verigold.”

Sachar juxtaposes the boy duo of Jeff and Bradley with the girl trio of Melinda, Lori, and Colleen. The juxtaposition implies conflict between the two gendered groups, and there are fights, but Sachar also shows that girls and boys can get along and coexist peacefully in the same space.

“A teacher can often learn a lot more from a student than a student can learn from a teacher.”

Carla uses juxtaposition to subvert the power dynamic between students and teachers. She puts teachers and students together and says teachers can learn more from their students. Carla advances the motif that adults don’t automatically have more insights than children.

“Girls are easy to beat up. You just have to hit them once, and they cry and run away.”

Bradley’s statement foreshadows the fight between him and Melinda, and the fight between Jeff and Melinda. Melinda gives them both black eyes and makes the quote ironic. In a twist, girls aren’t easy to beat up—boys are easy to beat up. Thus, Sachar subverts gender norms.

“So long as Jeff is friends with me, nobody else will like him!”

Bradley brings in the motif of vulnerability and control. He doesn’t want Jeff to have other friends because they’ll threaten him. As long as Jeff is friends with him, a self-described monster, he can control the number of friends he can have because no one wants to be friends with someone who’s also friends with a “monster.”

“Homework. After school Bradley Chalkers was going to go to Jeff Fishkin’s house, and they were going to do their homework together. Bradley couldn’t believe it. Homework. It was all he thought about as he sat at his desk—last seat, last row—and waited for school to end. Maybe it won’t be too horrible, he reasoned. After all, Jeff always does his homework. He must like it.”

Homework links to the theme of Personal Transformation and Growth, and the thought of doing homework—of turning into someone else—causes Bradley to ruminate on the topic. Bradley uses repetition—he repeats “homework” four times—to try and wrap his head around the chance that he, the worst boy in school, could do something good like homework.

“Oh, you know, he wouldn’t stop bothering me. I kept telling him to get lost, but he kept hanging around. I never liked him. No one does. Then he said to me, ‘Give me a dollar or I’ll spit on you!’ Well, no one threatens me and gets away with it! I don’t take that from nobody. So he tried to hit me, but I ducked, then punched his face in. I didn’t want to do it, but I had no choice.”

Jeff, too, links to the motifs of narratives and control. Like Bradley, he tells lies to create a comforting, flattering story. To make himself look good, he explains to Carla that he hit Bradley in the face once Bradley threatened to spit on him if he didn’t hand over a dollar. Jeff’s lie indicates that he’s becoming an unthoughtful person—a “monster.”

“I think you would like to get good grades. I think that the only reason you say you want to fail is because you’re afraid to try.”

Carla’s diagnosis of Bradley links to the theme of Confronting Fears and Insecurities. Bradley is afraid to fail. It also connects to the theme of personal transformation of growth. For Bradley to change, he has to tackle his fears and try to excel at school.

“They call him a monster, and other people start calling him a monster, and everyone treats him like a monster, and then after a while, he starts believing it himself. He thinks he’s a monster too. So he acts like one. But he still isn’t a monster. He still has lots of good, buried deep inside him.”

There are lots of labels a reader can attach to Bradley’s persona and behavior, but Bradley settles on “monster.” It’s what kids call him, and it’s the noun that sticks. Carla emphasizes the dominance of the word through repetition. She repeats it multiple times. Through repetition, other people can think they’re a monster, and they can make a person believe they’re a monster, but Carla doesn’t believe in monsters, and Bradley proves her right by revealing the good inside him.

“He looked around. The floor and the bottom half of the walls were covered with green tile. There were two white sinks and a paper towel dispenser. There were three toilets in three separate stalls. Each stall had a door. It looked very much like the boys’ bathroom. Girl toilets appeared to be the same as boy toilets. He was disappointed.”

Earlier, Bradley imagined the girls’ bathroom as a lavish space. When he enters the girls’ bathroom, his expectations come crashing down because it’s the same as the boys’ bathroom. The implication is that boys and girls are equal, and the girls’ bathroom can provide Bradley with a safe space, as gender is not a concrete barrier.

“They worked together. Bradley was surprised by how much his father knew. He made all the hard parts seem easy. Bradley was a little disappointed by how quickly they finished. He had liked working with his father.”

The image of Bradley doing his homework with his dad demonstrates another side of his father—a compassionate person who wants to help his son succeed. It also reveals Bradley’s capacity for emotional relationships. The diction—the words used, like “disappointed”—emphasize Bradley’s warm feelings for his dad.

“He folded his arms on his desktop and lay his head down sideways across them. He felt sad, but relieved, as he gazed at the gold stars.”

The image of a relieved, head-down Bradley reinforces the powerful symbolism behind homework. Transformation can be scary, and Bradley isn’t ready to step into a new identity, so he rips up the homework and takes comfort in his accustomed identity. However, the image of him staring at the gold stars reveals his determination to keep trying.

“The Concerned Parents Organization never likes anything. They’re always causing trouble at my school, too. They want to turn kids into robots.”

Claudia reveals the irony—the funny twist—behind the Concerned Parents Organization. Arguably, if they were concerned about their children, they would want people like Carla teaching them how to think and feel instead of treating them like machines. Claudia’s critique of the organization foreshadows the contentious meeting and showcases her sharp insight.

“Life was too weird for Jeff to return to class.”

The blunt tone furthers the symbolism behind the gendered bathrooms. Jeff’s thought occurs after Colleen follows him into the boys’ bathroom. In the story, boys go into the girls’ bathroom, and girls go into the boys’ bathroom, so the norms that make them seem irreconcilably different are weak.

“Before dinner, while it was still light, Bradley’s father, bad leg and all, taught Bradley how to dribble. Bradley could hardly wait to show his friends.”

Sachar continues to build upon Bradley’s relationship with his dad. Now, he teaches him to dribble a basketball. The quote links to Personal Transformation and Growth and Confronting Fears and Insecurities—Bradley is trying to be good at something, though he might fail. The quote also connects to Friendship and Acceptance. Bradley has friends, and he wants to try and learn how to dribble so he can play basketball with them.

“What if he keeps on biting her? What if every day he sneaks up behind her and bites her on her butt? Then what would you do?”

The man’s question furthers the unfavorable representation of most adults. His diction—words like “biting” and “butt”—make him (and the adults that agree with him) come across as sophomoric and unreasonable. The concerned parents think Carla is “zany,” but their dialogue betrays their lack of thoughtfulness.

“But it wasn’t me who magically changed your life, Bradley. It was you. You’re not Cinderella, and I’m not Prince Charming.”

Carla alludes to the classic Cinderella fairytale to convince Bradley that he doesn’t need her to be a good person. He doesn’t have to go back to his unthoughtful ways. He, not her, has the power to be kind and thoughtful. The allusion further subverts gender norms as Bradley becomes Cinderella and Carla is Prince Charming.

“Bradley ran to him and hugged him, nearly knocking him over.”

After reading Carla’s emotional letter, Bradley gives his dad an emotional hug. Now, instead of destroying things out of meanness, he almost topples his dad out of love. The image subverts gender norms—it shows that fathers and sons can be affectionate with one another.

“Bradley trembled. He felt the same way as when he first tried to turn in his homework. ‘I don’t know what to do at a birthday party,’ he said, shivering.”

The narrator links birthday parties to homework, so birthday parties also symbolize a transformation. Bradley doesn’t know how to act at a birthday—he doesn’t want to deviate from the norms. He’s scared, but with Jeff’s help, he confronts his fears and insecurities.

“Bradley looked around, puzzled. He was the only one sitting down. He quickly rose, bumping against the table. A paper cup fell onto the ground. As he bent down to pick it up, he knocked over his chair.”

Bradley destabilizes the norms at the birthday party by sitting down to eat before the game and knocking things over. Yet standing out doesn’t make a “monster.” Breaking norms is not that big of a deal. Amie picks up the cup, and Dena picks up the chair. The two girls help him instead of teasing him, linking to the Friendship and Acceptance theme.

“But as it turned out, nobody on his team could do a somersault!”

Bradley thinks he’s the only member on his team who can’t do a somersault, but he’s wrong—no one on their team can do one. What he thinks makes him different doesn’t make him different at all. Part of Bradley’s growth and transformation is realizing he’s not the only one with imperfections.