Al Capone Does My Shirts

Title: Al Capone Does My Shirts
Author: Gennifer Choldenko
Genre: Fiction
Reviewer: Patrick

This book is the story of Moose Flanagan, Alcatraz Island Boy. If you have never heard of Alcatraz Island, it was a twelve-acre rock covered with cement that housed a prison off the shore of San Francisco, California. It was open during the 1934 and closed in 1964. Moose moved there with his family. His dad was one of the prison guards. Alcatraz or “Devil’s Island” had convicts that are the kind other prisons didn’t want. The worst of the worst, they said it was a prison no one could escape from. Moose had a sister named Natalie that needed a special school, the Esther P. Marinoff School. It was for kids like Natalie that needed extra help. She had autism which no one knew a lot about back then. The story was set in 1935 right after the prison opened.

The story was about how 23 kids lived among the worst convicted prisoners and how strange friendships can evolve. Moose liked baseball and all the things regular kids liked. He had to move away from all his friends for his sister. One of the most famous prisoners was Al Capone, a dangerous gangster from Chicago. The title of the book comes from the fact that Al Capone worked in the prison laundry! Piper, one of Moose’s’ new friends had a scheme to make money by having extra shirts washed in the prison laundry and people would pay to have Al Capone wash their shirts. Until the warden, Piper’s father, found out…. You have to read the book to find out how Al Capone helped Moose, his sister and his family.

This book tells how you can make unusual friends and I would recommend it. It is a book that has a real story and you can make sense of the plot. It is fiction but I believe that it could have really happened. I would have liked to go to have a tour of the prison even though it has been closed for years. That makes the story seem so real. Sometimes you have to put your family first and I liked how Moose was able to make the best of that type of situation.