SOLVED. Children's Fantasy chapter book about a (Slight Spoiler?) Monster School. [s]

[Lumi]

(EDIT: it's been solved !!! it's Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror by Jennifer Finney Boylan. Thank you so so much to Ann who found the book!!)

I read this one chapter book (kind of thick in size??) from the childrens section around I'd say ~10 years ago. I think the cover was orange with the main character looking out at the reader. I somehow remember a lot of plot but not any names and it has honestly been driving me insane lol so I made a goodreads account just to shoot my shot and pray someone out there knows what the name of this book is (SPOILERS for the plot ahead):

- story is abt a boy who has two friends going to a secret school for monsters, I think they are all 11 years old/6th graders
-> the male friend is weirdly tall and never knew why
->the female friend has a strained relationship with her parents because of the deaths of her two older sisters
->the main boy lives with his grandma, parents are gone
- they all play instruments — I remember the female friend plays the flute and the main character I think plays the saxophone
- main boy and his two friends were by themselves waiting for the school bus (I think it was snowing) when main boy’s saxophone case falls down a hill and in the pond (i forgot if he got it back or not)
- when they went back to the bus stop, the bus pulls up. the driver is a little shady and the bus is empty
- the bus passes all the normal stops w/out picking anyone else up and instead of bringing them to school it goes to this secret monster academy
- at the top of this monster academy in this tower (I think) is the headmaster who doesn’t go out much
- at this monster school, everyone including the staff is a monster, a lot of the new students don’t know what monsters they are at first
- the main boy notes that the new batch of students are the only students here, no sign of any upperclassmen
- during the first week, they meet these two girls who believe they are vampires and have a superiority complex over it
- there is a party the staff holds in which they say is the last night they can truly show their monster qualities, afterwards they have to learn how to be normal and blend in
- the new students undergo a process to figure out what monster creature they are
->main boy doesn’t get a conclusive answer and still doesn’t know what he is
->male friend finds out he is a big foot
->female friend finds out she’s a wind elemental
->one of the vampire girls was actually a vampire, while the other was actually some kind of sludge monster —> is now ostracized from the vampire group
- some plot stuff happens that I’m forgetting, but I think at some point of of the book more and more students are disappearing, and were all kept somewhere
- students are also progressively becoming more “normal” as per the school’s teachings
- at some point main boy’s female friend disappears somewhere
- something happens that leads to the main boy leaving the school and going to this ?? island I think?? and meets his mother (this could be comepletely off base but I also remember their discussion taking place on a piano bench of some sort)
- his mother turns out to be some kind of monster hunter ?? and finds out that his father is the headmaster of the academy is actually his father
main boy discovers that he is an angel, which is also what his mother is
- main boy also finds out that his grandma has been lying to him
finds out that all the kids who went to the monster school had fake cover up deaths —> to the outside world, the main boy and his two friends died in the pond when trying to get his saxophone case
- the main boy has to go back to the academy and uh save the school I guess
- all of the students remaining wear beanies
- main boy meets up with one of the girls he became friends with (for some reason I keep thinking her name is Fern but I could be wrong) who was wearing a beanie, she joins him
- they fight against the teachers and the remining students who are “normalized”
- turns out all the students who rebelled and fought to express their monster qualities passed this elaborate test made by the teachers bc the point of being a monster is to act like a monster
- the students who failed were sent away
- main vampire girl was like her father will not stand for this and the teachers were like honey your father rebelled the first week he was here back when he was a student
- the rest of the upper classmen suddenly come out of the woodworks, they were kept in other parts of campus as to not ruin the test
- two girls come asking for where their sister is, turns out they are the female friend’s “dead” older sisters who are also wind elementals
- staff are a bit weary of main boy bc he is an angel who by nature are adverse to monsters
- end of the book is a cliff hanger in which the female friend is trapped in her wind form and trapped in a wind mill

[Ann]

Maybe Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror by Jennifer Finney Boylan?

Here's the GoodReads summary:
Thirteen-year-old Falcon Quinn and his neighbors, Max and Megan, board bus number 13 for school on an ordinary day in Cold River, Maine. Only the bus doesn't take its ordinary route, and Falcon and his friends soon find themselves in an extraordinary place—on Shadow Island, at the Academy for Monsters. With a student body stranger than the cast of any monster movie Falcon has ever seen, the academy is home to creatures and oddities of all kinds. In the academy's atmosphere, Falcon's friends begin to unleash and enjoy their monster natures, from flying with Pearl, La Chupakabra , to decaying with the "Zombie Snap." Falcon has always felt different, with his one bright blue eye and one shadow-black eye, but is he really a monster ? Will he discover the other thing that makes him different when he finds himself in the Black Mirror? And when he learns that the school's mission is to teach students to hide their aberrant natures, Falcon and his friends need to find a way to fight back for their monster selves. Bestselling author Jennifer Finney Boylan introduces Falcon, Max, Megan, and their band of monster friends in this first installment of a hair-raising and sidesplitting adventure of monstrous proportions.

[Lumi]

Ann wrote: "Maybe Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror by Jennifer Finney Boylan?

Here's the GoodReads summary:
Thirteen-year-old Falcon Quinn and his neighbors, Max and Megan, boar..."

OMG YESS THAT'S IT THAT'S THE BOOK TYSMM I've literally been thinking abt what this book could possibly be for YEARS I literally can't thank you enough !!!

[Kris]

Glad you found your book, Lumi.

Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror (book 1) of the Falcon Quinn series by Jennifer Finney Boylan - Ann's find.