Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick is one of those books that makes you laugh and cry in the same paragraph. The characters in the story stick with you long after the book is finished. Steven is in 8th grade and like most older siblings, his younger brother drives him crazy. It isn't that he and Jeffrey fight over things, no Jeffrey worships the ground Steven walks on, and in some ways that is worse. After an early morning kitchen mishap, Jeffrey is rushed to the emergency room where the doctors diagnose him with ALL, a form of leukemia. Everything has just been turned upside down. How is Steven going to handle Jeffrey's illness, school, all city jazz band and two crazy parents?