Soup's Drum is the fourth book in the Soup book series, written by Robert Newton Peck. It was published in 1980.
In the plot, Soup falls in love with a girl named Juliet Ransom, and decides to make a declaration of love for her. Unfortunately, a series of events causes Janice Riker, the school's feared bullie, to fall in love with Soup. Meanwhile, Robert deals with his own crush on classmate Norman Jean Bissel.
This novel provides examples of:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Janice Riker, the feared high school bullie, a girl described as fat, ugly, stupid and constantly angry, who suffers from bad breath and uses her enormous physical strength to make the lives of the two protagonists hell. A series of events ends up making her accidentally think Soup is interested in her. Unfortunately for Soup, Janice immediately falls in love with him, and she ends up becoming an even worse girlfriend than a bullie.
- Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Soup is in love with Juliet. Robert in turn thinks Juliet is ugly, mainly because she doesn't have a front tooth. He thinks Soup must be blind and wonders what he sees in her.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Soup's plans end up winning him the love of a girl with the initials JR. Unfortunately, she turns out to be the wrong girl...
- Berserk Button: Robert ends up losing his temper when everyone calls his drum as the "Soup's drum", and decides to get revenge on his friend for that.
- Betty and Veronica: Soup is Archie. The sweet and sensitive Juliet is Betty and the nasty bullie Janice is Veronica.
- Big Bad: Janice, as usual in the franchise, although this time for quite different reasons...
- Butt-Monkey: Even by his standards, nothing goes right for Soup in this story. Soup's two attempts to declare his love for Juliet end up failing miserably as they make the terrible Janice fall in love with him.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: A comical example. Janice is the school bully, who loves to make everyone's lives hell, including the protagonists Soup and Robert. When Janice accidentally believes Soup is interested in her, she falls in love with him, showing a surprisingly sensitive and romantic side. Unfortunately for Soup, this doesn't help the situation, as Janice forcefully kisses him, to the point where he misses the time when she hated him. Also, it's a little subverted by the fact that Janice continues to be a nasty person to anyone other than Soup.
- The Dreaded: Janice as usual for Soup and Robert, although in Soup's case, it's for different reasons than usual...
- Epic Fail: Soup's two attempts to reveal his love to Juliet fail in the worst possible way.
- On the first try, Soup writes "LWV loves JR" on a tree. Unfortunately, Soup forgot the fact that JR are the same initials as Janice Riker, the school bully. The result? Janice grabs Soup in front of the entire school and kisses him nonstop, much to his horror.
- On the second attempt, Soup rearranges the city's fireworks to spell out a declaration of love from him to Juliet. The problem is that Janice is stupid and illiterate, and when she sees the letter J in the sentence, she thinks it's her name. Once again, Janice forcefully grabs Soup and kisses him nonstop, much to his horror again.
- Forceful Kiss: Janice does this to Soup on two occasions, much to his horror.
- Love Triangle: Soup, Juliet and Janice.
- Oh, Crap!: Soup screams in terror as Janice jumps on him and starts kissing him.
- With Friends Like These...: At the end of the book, when Janice forcibly grabs Soup and starts kissing him, Robert decides to play with his friend's embarrassing situation even more. He throws a drum that's only covered on one side on top of the couple, completely covering them from the rest of the town and giving them the discretion to continue kissing without interruption. So Robert starts beating the drum so no one can hear Soup's cries for help. And when Juliet shows up asking for Soup, Robert lies that he doesn't know where he is. In the final scene, when kissing his crush Norma, Robert laughs thinking about the hell Soup must be suffering with Janice at that moment.
