Beware, all grown-ups who are contemplating being mean to a child. Do so at your peril. Pay no heed to this warning and you’ll be in for . . . the Giggler Treatment! In this funny, very silly, and very gross story for middle graders, Booker-winning Irish author Doyle (for adults, A Star Called Henry, 1999, etc.) proposes that dog poo—a word he deeply enjoys using and describing—lays around for the punishment of adults who are unkind to kids. The Gigglers, color-changing, elf-like creatures, have, since the beginning of time, paid dogs (or other animals) for their droppings and left the stuff around so that unsuspecting, mean adults might step in it. Mr. Mack, the intended victim here, is about to be “treated” on his way to the train station because he sent his two sons to bed without dinner the night before. In painstaking detail, readers are given a running countdown of how many minutes and inches are left before Mr. Mack’s foot hits its mark. At the last moment, though, when the boys explain away their father’s behavior, the whole Mack clan, the Gigglers, and Rover, the dog who anted up, give wild chase to the station, via Egypt and Paris, to prevent the disaster from happening. Piled with words that denote a variety of body functions and wastes, this ludicrous book should more than please the most fervent among the gross-out set. Wait till they see what passes for chapters here, too: one’s named for the author’s mother (so that he could stay up late) and another, for his refrigerator. Includes an exquisitely wacky glossary. (Fiction. 7-11)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-16299-8
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
No teacher wants to teach this year’s fourth-grade class at Aesop Elementary. Just as Mrs. Struggles, the principal, is about to give up, Mr. Jupiter appears with a flawlessly huge resume. The class tests him, but he wins them over as the year progresses through these 23 stories. As the title and school’s name hint, there’s an Aesop connection. Each of the stories has a moral straight out of a fable. Calvin’s troubles with math lead him to wish he was back in unproblematic kindergarten. He becomes the class helper in a class of Stepford kids to the tune of “be careful what you wish for.” In another, librarian—wait for it—Ms. Paige Turner uses the lure of International Geographic to teach Lenny and Bruce the Dewey Decimal System: “necessity is the mother. . . . ” Here’s Sideways Stories from Wayside School married to Aesop. Despite a Dewey error and some humor over the head of the target audience, this is a winner, and the final story seems to promise a fifth-grade sequel. (Fiction. 7-11)
Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-375-83672-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2007
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda.
Hank Zipzer, poster boy for dyslexic middle graders everywhere, stars in a new prequel series highlighting second-grade trials and triumphs.
Hank’s hopes of playing Aqua Fly, a comic-book character, in the upcoming class play founder when, despite plenty of coaching and preparation, he freezes up during tryouts. He is not particularly comforted when his sympathetic teacher adds a nonspeaking role as a bookmark to the play just for him. Following the pattern laid down in his previous appearances as an older child, he gets plenty of help and support from understanding friends (including Ashley Wong, a new apartment-house neighbor). He even manages to turn lemons into lemonade with a quick bit of improv when Nick “the Tick” McKelty, the sneering classmate who took his preferred role, blanks on his lines during the performance. As the aforementioned bully not only chokes in the clutch and gets a demeaning nickname, but is fat, boastful and eats like a pig, the authors’ sensitivity is rather one-sided. Still, Hank has a winning way of bouncing back from adversity, and like the frequent black-and-white line-and-wash drawings, the typeface is designed with easy legibility in mind.
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-448-48239-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
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