["Does This School Have Capital Punishment?" is] a sentimental fantasy, complete with good guys who need to learn compassion, bad guys who turn out to have soft hearts and a fairy godfather in the form of a great old black jazz musician.

It is improbable, to say the least, that a renowned trumpeter named Major Kelley would travel from New York to Chicago to help a bright, smart-alecky white kid beat an unfair accusation of marijuana possession—and then buy a cake inscribed "INNOCENT" to celebrate the victory for the boy…. But then almost everything in this book is a little unreal. Both kids and teachers at tough, exclusive Burr Academy are impossibly clever; Major Kelley is often impossibly oracular; and any character can in an instant become a mouthpiece for a minilecture (thoroughly worthy, mind you) on why jazz should be taught in the schools or why...