by Jackson Galan, age 13

This Class Sucks, the reviews and criticism workshop, provided a forum for students to appreciate the art of being opinionated. Their taste-making skills were tested on areas as varied as food, music, and even 826 itself.

I didn’t have a chance to taste cookie #3, but of the two I did get to sample, I liked cookie #2 much more. Homemade cookies tend to be a lot better than the store-bought kind, and this is a classic example. Cookie #1 (the manufactured one, Chips Ahoy!) had a near-tasteless, flaky cookie part that was dominated by the artificial-tasting chocolate chips. The chips in this cookie were soft, almost mushy in texture, and are the only flavor that you can really taste when you eat a Chips Ahoy! cookie. Cookie #2 was quite the opposite of cookie #1. It was homemade, soft and chewy, with chocolate chips that tasted like real chocolate. The cookie part of this treat had a sugary-tasting flavor, which melted away as you pressed it against the roof of your mouth. It was a much better cookie that #1, but in a tight spot, Chips Ahoy! wouldn’t be a bad snack.