The Homework Machine by Bridgette Ganley

Summary of The Homework Machine By Dan Gutman
The book, “The Homework Machine” takes place at the Grand Canyon School in Arizona. The book itself is a series of interviews from the characters involved on the building, use and destruction of the Homework Machine. The main characters are Brenton Damagatchi, Judy Douglas, Sam Dawkins and Kelsey Donnelly. All are members of the D Squad in Miss Rasmussen’s fifth grade class. The story begins with Brenton building the Homework Machine to do his own homework. He tells Sam Dawkins also known as Snikwad about the machine one day at school. July over heard the conversation and ends up telling another classmate, Kelsey about the machine. Snick, called Brenton a Fake and A liar on the playground and Judy and Kelsey were telling Snick to back off, it was ten Brenton invited them over his house to see the Homework Machine. Soon after, it was doing all their homework, printing it in their own handwriting, as they hung out in Brenton’s room. Miss Rasmussen, begins to suspect something is going on as the D Squad is working on an A average, she found this odd since Kelsey and Sam were C students at best. As the story goes on, the D squad gives the Homework Machine a code name “Belch” so they could talk about it, without others knowing what it was. As Miss Rasmussen, moved them around to other groups and rumors started about the machine and the D squad being cheaters around school, they began to wonder if someone else knew about the machine. When Principle Wilson invited them to a meeting in his office, they decided to destroy the machine. They tried to delete the files, and then unplug it, but the machine would not let them. Finally they decided to throw it into the Grand Canyon using a catapult. When some hikers found what was left of a keyboard in the Canyon, Police Chief Rebecca Fish became involved; this scared the kids into confessing about the machine. There only punishment was to hike into the Grand Canyon on a hot summer day and clean up the mess.

Detailed Summary

The book, “The Homework Machine” takes place at the Grand Canyon School in Arizona. The book itself is a series of interviews from the characters involved on the building, use and destruction of the Homework Machine. The main characters are Brenton Damagatchi, Judy Douglas, Sam Dawkins and Kelsey Donnelly. All are members of the D Squad in Miss Rasmussen’s fifth grade class. The story begins with Brenton building the Homework Machine to do his own homework. He tells Sam Dawkins also known as Snikwad about the machine one day at school. July over heard the conversation and ends up telling another classmate, Kelsey about the machine. Snick, called Brenton a Fake and A liar on the playground and Judy and Kelsey were telling Snick to back off, it was ten Brenton invited them over his house to see the Homework Machine.
The D squad started spending time at Brenton’s house after school, so the machine could do their homework. Brentons Mom was happy he had made friends in school. After Miss Rasmussen, commented on their handwriting being similar, Brenton asked each of them for a sample of their handwriting, he scanned in the samples and changed the software so each of them would have their homework printed in their own handwriting. Brenton noticed that Snikwad was looking at a chess board on his desk, he asked him if he played, he responded that chess was for “Eggheads”. So Brenton explained that when you play chess you’re like a general with all kinds of soldiers at your command, then he showed him what each piece was and how it moved around the board. After they were finished discussing chess, Judy brought up the idea of a code word for the Homework Machine, as they were talking Snick let out a loud burp. After hearing that, Brenton suggested using the name Belch as the code name. Snikwad started to play chess with his dad and began to learn the game. In January his dad was sent overseas as a member of the US Air Force.
The D Squad was using Belch every day to do their homework and each was working on an A average. Sam and his dad were now playing chess over email and using a website other soldiers were using to play. Police Chief Rebecca Fish received and anonymous phone call about a machine that did kids homework automatically. After looking into the call, she felt it was a prank. The next day Snikwad was in the boys room when he noticed someone wrote D squad are cheaters, he quickly scribbled over it, but didn’t know if anyone else saw it. Miss Rasmussen, began to think something was going on with the D Squad, they were all working on an A average, which she believed Brenton and Julie were capable of, but not Sam and Julie. So Brenton changed the software, so it would make mistakes randomly on Kelsey and Snick’s homework.
Soon after someone tried to break into Brenton’s house, so he gave the computer to Snick for safe keeping. The next day, Miss Rasmussen gave the class a surprise test to find out if the cheating rumors were true. She planned to take the results to Principle Wilson. The day after the test, she learned that Sam’s father was killed in an ambush, on his military vehicle. Someone posed about the Homework machine in the school paper, the next day. After being invited to Principle Wilsons office the D squad was wondering who put the posing in the school paper about the homework machine, Brenton admitted he was the one who did it. It was then they decided to destroy the Homework machine. Brenton first tried to delete the files from the computer, but could not. Julie pulled the plug on the machine and it kept running. Sam told Brenton to stop fooling around and turn the machine off, but he wasn’t and couldn’t. They then decided to toss the Homework Machine into the Grand Canyon using a catapult. It threw the machine high in the air and out of site, smashing it on the Canyon floor. Hikers in the Canyon found what was left of a computer keyboard and called the Police, which is where Chief Rebecca Fish get’s involved. Principle Wilson called Miss Rasmussen, with the news that a keyboard was found in the canyon. After speaking with the police, all the kids were called into Police Chief Rebecca Fish’s office. Being called in scared them and they all confessed. Their punishment was to hike down into the Grand Canyon, on a hot summer day and clean up what was left of the Homework Machine.