A Day With A Totally Awesome Ending: Spaghetti Is Not A Finger Food by Jodi Carmichael

Connor loves rules. Math is his favorite subject because it follows rules.

Other rules are confusing. Like, it is good to tell people things they don't know. Teachers do it all the time, but doing it gets Connor into trouble.

For example, Connor knows that the rule in his school library is that stools are for standing on to reach high shelves. Chairs are for sitting and reading to yourself. But when he spots the universe's coolest book on his favorite subject, More All About Dogs, on a top shelf, he sees Jane sitting on a stool--reading. She refuses to follow the stool rule, so he has to push her off to reach the book he needs for his report. Jane is breaking the rules, but suddenly Connor is in trouble.

Connor knows that being kind to the classroom pet is the rule, but when he interrupts his teacher for the fourth time to try to explain that T. Rex, their pet gecko, had escaped and is caught in the radiator, he is in trouble.

"Do you think T. Rex being fried is funny?" I asked the giggling girls. "I could Google it for you!"

Mrs. Winter's face got all wrinkly. That reminded me of a TV commercial. "Mrs. Winter," I said, "you have way more wrinkles than my mom does. Do you know that there is a face cream that is only $29.95 you can buy, Magic Wrinkles No More, from the TV?"

Her face went as white as vanilla ice cream. Wow! Just mentioning the Magic Wrinkles No More made her wrinkles disappear!

At that point it's off to the principal's office for a chat. Connor loves the comforting slippery chair that makes him feel calm, and he likes the office lady, Mrs. Robinson, whose hair and clothes are also smooth and slippery-looking, but he gets in trouble when he insists that the principal should speak to her about her jagged-looking fingernails.

"Ms. Robinson should take better care of her nails," I said. "She is so nice and smooth everywhere else."

Sometimes it's tiring having to explain myself.

But just as Connor's day is going from bad to a note-from-the-principal status, his knowledge of dogs saves the custodian from a big, dirty and rough-looking dog, and he finds himself suddenly the star of the day, in Jodi Carmichael's Spaghetti Is Not a Finger Food: (and other life lessons) (Little Pickle Press). Connor is smart and well-meaning but clearly a bit on the Asperger's syndrome scale, and his reactions at the interface of rules and manners, while pretty funny, are also enlightening about kids who march to a different drummer. The kid-pleasing illustrations of artist Sarah Ponce are both humorous and endearing, making this chapter book both informative and entertaining for middle-grade readers.