40 Fun Facts About Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie

What is the "dangerous pie" Steven's little brother stirs up in Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie?

Raw kitchen scraps and toy cars go into it: coffee grounds, eggs and their shells, cola, uncooked bacon and three Matchbox racers. The mess is only described in the first chapter.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, which illness is five-year-old Jeffrey diagnosed with after a nosebleed?

Leukemia, in the form doctors call ALL, is behind a nosebleed that will not stop. Steven spends the day fearing trouble for letting Jeffrey fall, then hears the real news that night.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, how does Steven support Jeffrey after a new classmate points out he is bald?

Shaves his own head is Steven's answer, part of a new resolve to act on what he can change. By concert night his All-City bandmates have gone bald as well.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, Annette and Renee turn the spring jazz concert into a fundraiser for what?

The Alpers' medical bills are the cause. The running total passes $21,000 by the intermission and ends above $23,000.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what does Steven give up at the benefit concert to stay with Jeffrey?

His big drum solo goes unplayed: honoring a promise to stay by his brother, Steven leaves at the intermission of the night he had been preparing for all year.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what does Steven Alper quietly stop doing for months after Jeffrey's diagnosis?

His schoolwork lapses for months until he is failing most classes. At the meeting he finally admits his brother has cancer, and he catches up over winter break.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, where at home does Steven retreat to practice drums for hours?

The basement is his refuge once the family's time and money go to his brother's treatment. A practice pad even comes along on a hospital trip.

Jordan Sonnenblick wrote Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie to help whom through a family crisis?

One of his students, an eighth-grader named Emily, had a little brother in cancer treatment and rarely spoke about it. Finding no novel about a teen in her position, he wrote one.

By the last chapter of Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, which term describes the state of Jeffrey's cancer?

Remission is where the story leaves him, though the sequel shows the lasting marks of treatment: a limp, shaky hands and trouble concentrating.

The story of Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie unfolds through which kind of writing by Steven Alper?

Journal entries written for English class carry the story. Miss Palma's rule keeps a folded-down page private, and Steven's notebook soon bristles with folded pages.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, a children's hospital in which city treats Jeffrey's cancer?

Philadelphia is where Jeffrey and his mother spend the first week after the diagnosis, leaving Steven at home with a father who barely speaks.

What job does Steven Alper's father bury himself in after Jeffrey's diagnosis in Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie?

Accountant fits a man who copes by going quiet and fretting over money late at night; he even vetoes the benefit concert before coming round.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what does Steven offer Renee on the school bus to patch things up?

A piece of gum does it. When she asks whether he fears she will contaminate it, he explains that he had only been trying to protect his little brother.

On concert night in Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, the emergency room traces Jeffrey's fever to what?

An ear infection is all it is. With chemotherapy flattening his immune system, though, even a slight fever means a dash to the hospital.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what does Steven leave with Samantha, a patient he meets at the hospital?

His drumsticks come back to him in a package from a nurse on the day he learns that Samantha has died.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, which relative does hospital patient Samantha say never visits her?

Her older sister has stayed away since the illness began, so Samantha makes Steven promise to stick by Jeffrey whatever happens.

Which sweet reward does school counselor Mrs. Galley hand Steven Alper for opening up about his troubles?

Candy hearts are her payment for honesty, and her advice lasts longer: stop agonizing over what cannot be changed and work on what can.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what begins disturbing Steven's sleep during Jeffrey's treatment?

A recurring nightmare, in which Jeffrey sinks into the ground during a game of catch, is what finally gets Steven talking to an adult about his fears.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, which new rule for high-schoolers threatens to empty the All-City jazz band?

Community service, newly required every semester, would force many players to quit. Annette's fix is to turn the band's own concert into a good cause.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what stops pianist Annette from playing in the spring concert?

A broken arm takes her off the piano bench late in the winter, so she pours her energy into running the event with Renee instead.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what is Steven serving Jeffrey for breakfast when the boy falls off a stool?

Oatmeal, or "moatmeal" in Jeffrey's five-year-old vocabulary, is on the table when he tumbles and his nose starts a bleed that refuses to stop.

How does drum teacher Mr. Stoll respond when Steven Alper tries to quit lessons to save his family money?

Mr. Stoll waives his fee entirely and keeps the lessons going. Giving them up was Steven's first attempt to act on what he could change rather than brood on what he could not.

What nickname do Steven Alper's high-school bandmates in the All-City Jazz Band give him as a junior member?

The Peasant, often shortened to Pez, marks him as one of the youngest players in a band made up mostly of high-schoolers.

Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie opens with Steven Alper looking back on his year from which school event?

His graduation ceremony frames the book: the story returns to it in the final pages, by which time Annette has become Steven's girlfriend.

Biff, the high-school boyfriend of Steven Alper's crush Renee, plays which instrument in the All-City Jazz Band?

Guitar is Biff's instrument, and as a high school sophomore he puts Renee even further out of reach for an eighth-grade drummer.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, what exactly is Matt Medic, Jeffrey's source of courage in hospital?

An action figure is what Jeffrey reaches for when treatment gets frightening; the cheerful five-year-old channels his bravery through Matt Medic.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, gifted pianist Annette hopes to take classes at which elite music school?

Juilliard, in Manhattan, is her goal, and the sequel reports that she made it there for college while still dating Steven.

Which Jordan Sonnenblick novel continues the Alper family's story from Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie?

After Ever After picks up the family years later. Sonnenblick wrote it after a social worker emailed to tell him the story was far from finished.

In the sequel to Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, college-age Steven takes off for which continent to play drums?

Africa is his destination: he leaves college for a year with a pair of bongos to join a drumming circle and find himself.

Which jazz trumpeter co-wrote "Manteca", one of the Latin jazz tunes name-checked in Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie?

Dizzy Gillespie wrote it in 1947 with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo and Gil Fuller, and it became one of the founding tunes of Afro-Cuban jazz.

After a week of denial about Jeffrey's cancer, Steven Alper tries which tactic to keep his brother alive?

Bargaining with God comes next: Steven persuades himself that the right promises will make Jeffrey well, before anger and self-pity take over.

In Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, which drugs leave Jeffrey's face puffy during his cancer treatment?

Steroids swell his face while chemotherapy takes his hair, changes that hit hard for a little boy his brother once called too cute.

Which publisher has issued Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie since 2005?

Scholastic picked it up after a newspaper profile of the author reached one of its editors through her mother, and it signed his second novel as well.

Jordan Sonnenblick taught eighth-grade English for eleven years in which state, also home to the Alper family?

New Jersey gave him both a classroom and a setting: he taught in Hackettstown and Phillipsburg while living over the state line in Pennsylvania.

Which band does Jordan Sonnenblick, a drummer and guitarist himself, name as his all-time favorite?

The Beatles top his list, and two of their songs, Hey Jude and Revolution, are among the music referenced in Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie.

Which future Pulitzer-winning memoirist taught Jordan Sonnenblick creative writing at Stuyvesant High School?

Frank McCourt kept urging the class joker to aim for deeper material, then retired after Sonnenblick's senior year to write Angela's Ashes.

What became of DayBue, the small press behind Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, weeks after the 2004 release?

It went out of business, and its owners gave the 4,000 unsold copies to a charity for siblings of children with cancer.

While at university, Jordan Sonnenblick dressed up as which character to cheer young cancer patients in hospital?

Santa Claus was his role on visits to a children's hospital, one of many campus activities alongside drumming in a theater group and announcing for the marching band.

Which national program for new graduates sent Jordan Sonnenblick to a fifth-grade classroom in Houston?

Teach For America, which recruits people for schools in high-need areas, placed him in Houston. He loved the job, then moved back east to marry and spent eleven more years in classrooms.

Jordan Sonnenblick was born in 1969 on which American holiday, on an Army base in Missouri?

Independence Day 1969 found his family at Fort Leonard Wood; his father left the Army a year later and they settled on Staten Island.