Back to School: Marco Goes to School by Roz Chast

MARCO WAS BORED. (YAWN!)

PLAYING WITH HIS SANDBOX WAS BORING.

WATCHING TV WAS BORING!

But Mom knows what will end that.

"HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF SCHOOL?"

"SKOOL???...

Mom fills Marco in on the details, mainly that it's a place where kids go to learn stuff.

Marco is not so sure about the skool thing. I mean, he already knows lots of things.

But the idea of something new to do gets Marco going, and soon he finds himself sitting in a row of seats, with his new teacher, Mrs. Peachtree, holding forth on the meaning of school and life in general. Bored already, Marco begins to tune her out:

“MONDAY TUESDAY CHEWSDAY CHUMDAY HUDDAY DOO-DAH-DAY..."

So far, Marco is underwhelmed with this skool stuff. Even his bird-seed and ketchup sandwich, packed in his very cool astronaut lunchbox, fails to pick up his spirits. But during rest time, Marco thoughts turn to moon landings, and he arises with a plan--a plan to build a rocket to the moon from the classroom block set. "Must get to the moon!" Marco mutters as his classmates snooze.

Then, at free play Marco meets a fellow moon traveler wannabe, Henry, and they are off and stacking those blocks toward the moon, until gravity steps in to bring them crashing back down to earth, a.k.a., their classroom floor.

Skool is bit of a bust, thinks Marco.

But Ms. Peachtree has a good game--block baseball--to get the blocks in the box, and Marco has a new friend with whom to share his space vision at recess as they soar high on the swings.

NO ONE WOULD MAKE IT TO THE MOON THAT DAY, BUT MARCO WOULD MAKE A FRIEND!

Maybe skool can be cool!

In the sequel to Too Busy Marco, Roz Chaste takes her little insomniac red parrot into a new adventure, Marco Goes to School (Atheneum, 2012), as Marco faces his first day of Kindergarten. Cartoonist Chaste has a way with few words and an eye-catching visual style. Says School Library Journal, "Chast's busy watercolors invoke the constant whirring of Marco's overactive imagination."