Revenge of the Nerd! Seven Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want to Survive The Cafeteria by John Grandits

Kyle's on the school bus, nose in his trusty insect book, while his seatmate Ginny natters on and on about the virtues and vices of the celery sticks in her sack lunch. Trying to be sociable, Kyle volunteers something that makes Ginny's eyes bug out.

"Mom didn't have time this morning, so I'm buying my lunch in the cafeteria."

Ginny gasped.

"How hard can it be?" I said.

That question is Kyle's first mistake. Ginny leans in dramatically.

"There are RULES!"

#1: DON'T HOLD UP THE LINE.
#2: DON'T TAKE TOO MANY THINGS.
#3: DON'T FORGET TO PAY.
#4: ALWAYS EAT WITH YOUR CLASSMATES.
#5: HOLD ON TO YOUR TRAY.
#6: NEVER AGGRAVATE THE LUNCH LADY.
#7: NEVER, EVER, TALK TO THE BIG KIDS.

Kyle doesn't like rules. They are too easy to break. His bug book under his arm, he scurries nervously down the hall to lunch with the other fifth graders like a line of army ants, the scary sixth graders hot on their heels, looking more like a swarm of yellow jackets, with the worst bus bully, Arthur, right behind him.

But the posted menu is long, and Kyle pauses to squint at each choice. Arthur pokes him in the back:

"Hey, Dweeb! Get moving!"

Yikes! He's already broken the first rule of survival. But Food Service Guy barks at Arthur. Quickly, Kyle stammers out a truthful explanation.

"It's not his fault," I said. "I was taking too long."

In short order, Kyle finds himself breaking every one of Ginny's rules. He piles his tray with all the choices and gets busted by the Lunch Line Lady. He doesn't know his PIN to pay the Register Woman, and when he hustles to get the last empty seat with his class, he trips and fall flat, the contents of his tray splattering everywhere. Every kid in the room turns to look and in that time-honored school custom, they hoot with one voice. All the Cafeteria Ladies have had it with Kyle. The Lunch Monitor glares down at him.

"That's it! You've caused enough trouble for today."

Eyes bulging like a beetle, she points a skinny, hairy appendage toward the sixth grade table, to the only empty seat in the house, right next to Arthur the bully.

He was hunched over his food with five other meat-eating water bugs. What could I do?

"Hey, Dweeb! Thanks for covering for me in the line," Arthur says.

It's The Revenge of the Nerd, in John Grandit's Seven Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want to Survive the Cafeteria (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), in which Kyle encounters all of the hazards of the school cafeteria--the bully, the menu, the wrath of the various Lunch Ladies and Guys, the dropped tray, and (horror of horrors) having to sit with the Big Kids. The only nemesis he navigates easily is the food. Sure, the pasta may look like worms, but creepy-crawly critters are Kyle's passion, and while slurping up his spaghetti, he engrosses and grosses out the sixth graders with his true tales of fifty-feet-long tapeworms and headless living cockroaches.

Artist Michael Allen Austin ably portrays his entomology-obsessed hero as the perfect preppy nerdboy in his pressed blue oxford shirt and scholarly glasses, with beloved bug book under his arm. Kyle is the quintessential bully bait, but also one with a secret weapon--he's a nice guy who knows really cool gross stuff. Austin's illustrations fill the full-bleed pages with comic bobble-head caricatures of the usual suspects of the middle-grader school scene, sure to tickle kids and a sure-fire hit for back-to-school reading.

For more first-days of school fun, pair this one with Grandit's and Austin's comedic and congenial companion book, Ten Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break if You Want to Survive the School Bus.