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From the Prologue:

I am Storm, and I am twelve. Not a bad age. But it could be the worst thing that ever happens to a boy. Worse than being kidnapped by body snatchers or being stuck in detention forever. Being twelve is like being in an eight-vehicle car wreck. It’s like being stuck upside down on a roller coaster.

This is my story.

It is also a story about India, who is a girl, not a country or a subcontinent, and about a derelict cookie factory that used to be a hospital. I am not a bad boy, but I’m not a good one, either.

My thing is flying.

Many people want to fly, but not everyone can. You need wings. I’ve got wings. I’ve got a skateboard.

When you want to fly, you must be fearless. I am fearless. Maybe you’ve seen me around. I’m the boy on the bus with hair hanging over his eyes, with a board under one arm or in his bag. You’ll never see me without my board or my board without me. We are one, as the saying goes. When I drop my board on the ground, lift my foot onto it, and kick off, no one can catch me. At least not by running or driving in a police car. Not anyone, ever. From time to time, the board gets wrecked, because in this game, you often fall off and sometimes fall over. Anyone who wants to fly shouldn’t be afraid of bruises or broken bones. Quite a few skaters have had this or that split, like knees or insides.

I am starting at a new school this fall. The school is called the School of Possibilities. It is my last chance. That’s what Mom, Dad, the headmaster, and a few others have told me. They’ve said that I had better believe it, because otherwise, I will be expelled, and after that, nothing good will be waiting for me in this life. There are places you can be sent to, even after you’ve been given your last chance, but they are talked about in whispers. They are meant for troublemakers who have no other hope. If you mess up your last chance, you get sent to the school for lost children, and your life will be ruled by the law of the jungle. In the School of the Lost, if you punch another child, you get a teardrop tattooed on your cheek. The worst kids have cheeks covered in tears. The School of the Lost is somewhere on the edge of the city—nobody really knows where. Children whisper about it in their yards and on the streets. It is said that there are no pictures on the walls there, and the students don’t learn the rivers of Europe or the dates of revolutions and wars. They do time—a bit like in prison. When this story begins, I only have one more opportunity before it’s prison for me. If I fail, I will be Lost No. 101…or something like that.

After that, there is nothing.

I don’t intend to fail.

Before I begin the story, I’ll show you a place. It’s a derelict factory. Nobody owns it. Nobody looks after it. It stands on the other side of the railroad tracks in the middle of a run-down neighborhood of wooden houses. It is as big as a castle and as black as a hole in a mountain. I liked it as soon as I saw it.

The factory is empty. Its windows and everything else inside it are broken. Even from the yard, you can see that it’s a dark place—so dark that you need a flashlight or eyes like a rat’s to walk through it. A tower stands at the side of the factory. It stands high above everything else, and you can almost see the whole city from it. You can only get up there using your sense of touch. If you were to use a flashlight, you would soon see that the walls of the tower are covered in painted pictures and writing. The place looks a little like a cave decorated with ancient markings:

I woz here. I’ll be back. Tom & Tilly. Don’t all asleep.
Don’t fall down. Don’t fall over. Fall over anyway.

When we get to the top of the tower, I’ll hand you some binoculars. They are an important tool. My mother gave them to me on the day this story starts. Through the binoculars, you can see the harbor and my new school. You can see the building I live in when I stay with my father. It is the middle one of those three skyscrapers.

Doesn’t look like much, does it? You wouldn’t want to live there. I live halfway up. The apartment has four rooms and a kitchen. It has a walk-in closet, a covered balcony, and a time slot in the basement sauna on Saturdays. There is a plaque on the door that says “Steele and Poole.” My father and I are Steele. My father’s new wife is Poole—Verity Poole. She is thin, although she eats nonstop. She is a bit like a spider that digs a hole and lies in wait for prey. Poole is also very good at a type of martial arts practiced by older people. She met Dad when she was eating goulash in his restaurant on the ground floor of our building. They fell in love.

Poole is a school counselor. You know, those people at school who look after children with problems—kids who are being bullied, or they are bullies themselves, or they are sick, or they have moved from somewhere else…or whatever. The counselor is the students’ friend—that’s the idea, at least. Verity Poole is a counselor at the school that gave me my last chance. You can probably guess the rest. She arranged for me to go to that school. It is thanks to Poole that I was given one more chance. She told Dad about the school. She really sold it to him. She said that the school was experimenting in new child-friendly methods, and that they would work even for me.

Verity Poole thinks she knows everything about boys, but she can think what she likes. The fact is that she knows nothing about boys. Her own child is a girl. The girl is called Mona, and she’s in the eighth grade. When I saw Mona for the first time, she was standing in front of the mirror, combing her long black hair, and she called me little brother. “You look like a prince, little brother,” she said, and asked if she could put some kohl on me. Kohl is a kind of pencil used by girls to draw on their faces. Mona wanted to pierce my eyes with it. That’s what I think.

Mona has a white face, and she listens to dismal music. When you look at Mona, you instinctively expect a sudden spurt of blood to erupt from her mouth, like a vampire. She calls many boys “princes.” She particularly calls boys whose eyes she wants to pierce “princes.” Mona has the names of all these princes written on her arms and her pencil case. She describes them as tattoos, although she has drawn them with marker pens.

When you look out from the tower, you can also see the city center. That’s where my mother lives. That’s where I live when it’s time to stay with my mom. You can see the tower from Mom’s window. The tower is visible from almost anywhere in the city, just as you can see everything from the tower.

Now that you have seen all this, we can come down from the tower and run across the yard.

Now I’ll begin.

This is the first day.

This is where it all starts.

In this Finnish import, a young boy’s future hangs on his shaping up at the ominous School of Possibilities, a place deemed his last chance for reform. Storm doesn’t appear to be all that hopeless a case, but his new stepmother insists that the strict rules and unusual policies (the first level of punishment is the assigning of a girlfriend who serves as spy for the school and homework monitor and cultural advisor to her wayward “boyfriend”) of the School are perfect for him. Storm might actually have lost his identity and fallen prey to the zombie-like influences of his peers (even if only to save his mom and dad who have disappeared courtesy of the school, leaving him with his increasingly hostile and creepy stepmom) if it weren’t for India, a truly incorrigible child who leads a small group of rebel children hiding out from the school leaders. The horrific secrets in the school basement, the uncertain fate of the outcast kids, and the whereabouts of his parents all require Storm’s attention, but he is just a twelve-year-old with a rapier wit and few resources. Storm is an intriguing narrator whose perspective is tricky to pin down—it is often impossible to determine whether he is being wildly dramatic or simply reporting the bizarre facts. His earnest efforts at rescuing everyone in his little corner of the world are effectively balanced with a steady stream of sarcasm, which saves him from becoming too blandly heroic. Ikonen’s gritty, expressionist black-and-white illustrations heighten the surreal, increasingly suspenseful tone of the novel. Offer this to horror fans, particularly Gaiman buffs, who aren’t quite ready for high school–level gore or terror.

“The School of Possibilities has been called part dystopian novel and part sinister fairy tale. However you’d like to classify it, it will school you in it’s deep dark secrets.

Storm Steele, a fearless twelve-year-old dreadlocked skateboarder has been doomed to the School of Possibilities. How does the School of Possibilities differ from any other school you might ask? The School of Possibilities is also called Last Chance—an institution that prevents a few desperate children from easily becoming thieves and murderers. Only thing is, Storm hasn’t robbed a bank or liberated the cats from the pet shop—he’s accused of running away.

With divorced parents and the typical evil step-mother, appropriately named Verity Poole, Storm’s life hasn’t been the smoothest and it’s all downhill as he’s forced to adhere to the school’s strict policies. No skateboarding, no friends, and many other crazy and unfair teaching methods. Let’s just say, the teacher draws guillotines on the board chalking up each disobedience by the students, and they even force Storm to date the headmaster’s daughter. As Storm struggles with the School of Possibilities’ power over him, he’s intrigued by the forbidden story of a girl named India, a girl whose very existence is denied by school authorities but whose name plants hope in the hearts of students facing the soul-crushing weight of their school’s grim penal system.

The two set off to discover the secrets that lay deep within the school, and you simply can’t help but read on.

Young readers will immediately hit it off with Storm who’s down to earth, but edgy enough to be classified as the cool kid you always imagined what it would be like to hang with. As the School tightens it’s leash around Storm, you’ll want to help him escape and break free from the obsessive adults attempting to steal his free spirit.” - examiner.com

“According to Storm Steele’s evil step-mother Verity Poole he is "an impossible child" and he is then forced to attend School of Possibilities—a school for kids that had been having trouble in their education. As Storm tries to rebel against the school’s strict policies, they punish him by forcing him to date the headmaster’s daughter and other crazy and unfair methods. Then, as time went on, Storm finds himself being helplessly obedient to the school’s rules and though he tries to resist, he strangely can’t. As Storm struggles with the School of Possibilities’s power over him, he meets India. She is a girl who calls herself a guard and the leader of a small group of children against the school. Soon the two of them set out to discover the school’s secrets before all children fall under its spell.

This book reminded me of Coraline by Neil Gaiman because it has the strange, curious, dark and horror movie feel to it. This book has great imagination and I thought the writing was good with an interesting plot and a great main character—Storm Steele is smart and brave. However, I thought the narration was a bit off because Storm used words (like "derelict") a regular 12 year old boy wouldn’t use, at least not any 12-year-olds I know. Then again, this book is translated from the original Finnish so that might be the reason why. I thought the illustrations in the book a nice addition and it’s like something Storm might have drawn. All in all, I recommend this book to middle grade readers and those who enjoy Coraline-like stories.” - Michelle and Leslie’s Book Picks

“Imagine a “special school” that turns kids into “Stepford” Students: obedient, compliant, not normal kids at all. In this school, if you are a girl, you’ll probably be assigned to be a girlfriend, and spy on your designated boyfriend. And if you are a boy and break a rule, you are assigned a girlfriend as punishment–and believe me, in this place, it is. Storm is the newest student at this eerie School of Possibilities for troubled youth. He is a 12-year-old skateboarder who loves to fly on the wings of his board. When he is skating, he is, in his own words, “fearless.” And, he tells us, “I’m not a bad boy, but I’m not a good one either.” Despite the fact that he has never done anything very awful, his step-monster–oops–stepmother–decides this school is Storm’s last chance to save himself.

As the book unfolds, we learn more about two very different aspects of Storm’s world: a school of increasingly zombie-like students, and an abandoned factory filled with wild children who have escaped from this terrifying school before having their own minds captured and enslaved.

Written by Finnish author Seita Parkkola, The School of Possibility is an intriguing story of family, school, friendship, and the particular difficulties of being 12 years old. It has a Roald Dahl-ish quality that is both startling and appealing: a kind of parable/horror /adventure story, complete with very eerie illustrations. by Jani Ikonen.
I really appreciate having access to more international children’s books, and sharing with adolescents contemporary stories from around the world. The writing is clean and sparse, yet quite poetic and filled with dialogue that is true to the characters the author has created and has a kind of sophistication and cleverness that kids and adults will both appreciate.

I hope we’ll continue to have increased access to more adolescent novels like this one that introduces them to the different writing styles and ideas of a world of authors.” - Lit for Kids

“The dark, richly detailed setting of this Finlandia Junior Prize nominee will capture imaginations. Ikonen’s illustrations accentuate the surrealist horror as the tale spirals into thriller.”

“Part dystopian novel and part sinister fairy tale, Finnish author Parkkola’s first book explores order-loving adults’ attempts to suck the free spirits out of children—at any cost. The author’s black-and-white expressionistic drawings add an air of eerie unreality… [that] will set readers to thinking about their own possibilities—and futures.”

Deprived of his beloved skateboard and sent unwillingly to a school that “promises each year to offer a chance to a few desperate children,” Storm Steele enters sixth grade at the School of Possibilities, where he is tormented by a social studies teacher who totes up punishments by drawing first a hangman and then a guillotine, line by line and infraction by infraction, for each student who crosses under her baleful eye. Storm is intrigued by the forbidden story of a girl named India, a girl whose very existence is denied by school authorities but whose name plants hope in the hearts of students facing the soul-crushing weight of their school’s grim penal system. When Storm’s gallows are complete, his punishment is “a new girlfriend.” The teacher explains that girlfriends are a new punishment and that “the results have been promising.”
When ordered to take Bridget to the movies, Storm is accosted by a pair of grimy twins who thrust a note from India into his hand. This missive follows Storm’s initial encounter with India in an abandoned factory, but stealth is necessary because Bridget, the headmaster’s daughter, is a “very dangerous” girlfriend who will report even the smallest infraction. As Storm soon learns, students reinforce official punishments with barrages of rotten garbage—and worse.

Storm’s friendship with India buoys him when his mother disappears without a trace, followed quickly by his father. His father’s new wife, Verity Poole, who works at the school, informs Storm that she is now his legal guardian. Their disappearance is Storm’s fault, Verity informs him, because each misdeed causes financial penalties; his parents must slave to repay his enormous debt.

Events become even creepier when Storm’s bodyguard shows him the school’s basement, full of “deathmasks” of every student. When one of India’s cohorts is captured and imprisoned in a glass cage, Storm and India mastermind a rescue attempt. They fail, however, and some fellow escapees are captured. Ingenuity and help from an unexpected friend are all Storm and India have to save their friends and expose the school’s evil to the public. This story’s suspenseful trajectory will keep readers turning pages as events spiral to a climactic finale.

Finnish author Seita Parkkola has written an engaging narrative reminiscent of her novel, Usva, and the Finlandia Junior Prize-nominated Viima. Jani Ikonen, who also illustrated Usva, adds an urban contemporary touch to Storm’s adventures. Translators Annira Silver and Marja Glass have brought to life a winning story for American middle readers.Deprived of his beloved skateboard and sent unwillingly to a school that “promises each year to offer a chance to a few desperate children,” Storm Steele enters sixth grade at the School of Possibilities, where he is tormented by a social studies teacher who totes up punishments by drawing first a hangman and then a guillotine, line by line and infraction by infraction, for each student who crosses under her baleful eye. Storm is intrigued by the forbidden story of a girl named India, a girl whose very existence is denied by school authorities but whose name plants hope in the hearts of students facing the soul-crushing weight of their school’s grim penal system. When Storm’s gallows are complete, his punishment is “a new girlfriend.” The teacher explains that girlfriends are a new punishment and that “the results have been promising.”

When ordered to take Bridget to the movies, Storm is accosted by a pair of grimy twins who thrust a note from India into his hand. This missive follows Storm’s initial encounter with India in an abandoned factory, but stealth is necessary because Bridget, the headmaster’s daughter, is a “very dangerous” girlfriend who will report even the smallest infraction. As Storm soon learns, students reinforce official punishments with barrages of rotten garbage—and worse.

Storm’s friendship with India buoys him when his mother disappears without a trace, followed quickly by his father. His father’s new wife, Verity Poole, who works at the school, informs Storm that she is now his legal guardian. Their disappearance is Storm’s fault, Verity informs him, because each misdeed causes financial penalties; his parents must slave to repay his enormous debt.

Events become even creepier when Storm’s bodyguard shows him the school’s basement, full of “deathmasks” of every student. When one of India’s cohorts is captured and imprisoned in a glass cage, Storm and India mastermind a rescue attempt. They fail, however, and some fellow escapees are captured. Ingenuity and help from an unexpected friend are all Storm and India have to save their friends and expose the school’s evil to the public. This story’s suspenseful trajectory will keep readers turning pages as events spiral to a climactic finale.

Finnish author Seita Parkkola has written an engaging narrative reminiscent of her novel, Usva, and the Finlandia Junior Prize-nominated Viima. Jani Ikonen, who also illustrated Usva, adds an urban contemporary touch to Storm’s adventures. Translators Annira Silver and Marja Glass have brought to life a winning story for American middle readers.