My first thought was “Oh look, another book about desegregating schools, but hey this one is in California and not the south, woot!” my next thought, 20 pages in, “Oh man, I love these kids!”
Armstrong and Charlie is a surprisingly good book. The characters are wonderful, the setting was spot on (being a child of the era, I found myself reminiscing about Clackers and Tootsie Pop Drops, and the SRA box, to mention just a few), and the book “told the truth.”