Somebody on This Bus is Going to be Famous by J.B. Cheaney

Nine kids get picked up every morning at the Hidden Acres Subdivision.  They ride the bus for over an hour going to and from school each day.

Shelly - determined to be a singing star
Bender - the bully with a problematic homelife
Miranda - the girl who will do anything for a friend
Kaitlynn - the girl who wants to be Mother Teresa
Spencer - the genius who isn't sure he's a genius
Jay - the football player whose grandfather has dementia
Matthew - the friendless boy who is secretly smart
Igor - the boy whose father can never find him
Alice - the girl who never talks

Nine kids who have a mystery to solve . . .

Who is the kid at Farm Road 152 that never rides the bus?  Each morning they go down the road to the bus shelter . . . and no one every gets on.  Mrs. B, the bus driver, won't say who the kid is.

So Bender sets out to find out about the kid and the mystery of Farm Road 152.  But it will take all nine kids to discover the truth.  For each one has a part of the secret.


This book works best as a character study of nine diverse kids.  While they are all very distinct characters, they are also similar in their goals, desires, and fears.  The mystery of the unknown kid is supposed to be a mystery until nearly the end of the book, but the clues are fairly obvious as to who the kids is from the beginning of the book.  The real mystery is to how the kids will survive a huge bus accident that is told about in the first chapter before going back nine months to tell how they get to that point.