The Icky Bigsy Spider! Stink and the Scary Hairy Spider by Megan McDonald

Stink was on a roll, ... in the zone..., cuckoo-crazy for origami. He folded junk mail, Post-it notes, bubble-gum wrapers. Easy Peasy!

Stink folded a dollar bill into an origami jumping frog and took it outside to the corner of the backyard for its maiden hop test. Wow!

Where'd it go? The test is too successful! He can't find the frog--which is also his lunch money for the next day. Stink searches through the weeds in the corner until--YIKES! WHAT'S THAT?

Stink saw something pink. It was several pink things..., big hairy legs...., joined to a big hairy head with a buzillion eyes!

It's giant, hairy tarantula with pink toes!

Stink's usual spider phobia turns into full-blown terror. He has to swallow his pride and ask his sarcastic sister Judy Moody for help finding his lunch money. But Judy can't find his dollar OR the giant spider. Stink calls on his friend Webster, who loves spiders. He's not called WEB-ster for nothin' and he pronounces Stink ARACHNOPHOBIC!

And when Stink and Webster meet a girl who is actually searching for her lost pink-toed tarantula, Webster gallantly offers their services in finding her pet, requiring Stink to undergo Web's guaranteed psychological cure for spider phobia, exposure therapy, by way of eight-legged origami tarantulas creeping up his arm.

Facing fear is not unknown to Stink, but in Megan McDonald's latest in her best-selling series, Stink and the Hairy, Scary Spider (Candlewick Press, 2020), Stink's cognitive behavior therapy is a complete success. Plenty of easy reading adventures with lots of laughs along the way make this one a fine addition to author McDonald's very successful Judy Moody and Stink favorites for kids just venturing into novel-reading. With laugh-out-loud episodes and filled with page-turning fun with drawings by ace illustrator Peter H. Reynolds, this one a worthy entry in McDonald's standout series. Says School Library Journal, "Short chapters delineate the story and provide an opportunity for Reynolds to showcase his marvelous and goofy illustrations."

Oh, Yeah? The Pigeon HAS to go to School by Mo Willems

Why do I have to go to school?

I ALREADY KNOW EVERYTHING!

Pigeon is being oppositional.

Wait! School starts early in the morning? No way!

You know what I look like in the morning!

It's NOT PRETTY!

Pigeon is adamant that he doesn't need school!

Of course, it's obvious to everyone but himself that Pigeon is scared of starting to school. He has a million What Ifs. The teacher may not like him. He may not like the teacher. What about those school lunches? Nobody likes them! What about those ginormous backpacks they make you carry? There is too much stuff to learn! Like math! All those numbers. He has only one big eye, you know!

At last, Pigeon admits the truth:

The unknown stresses me out, Dude!

What Pigeon needs is a place to go to get used to school first.

OH. Like Preschool and Kindergarten.

And, WAIT! Pigeon is going to get to ride on the big yellow school bus? He is ON IT! He's even driven one, sort of!

Mo Willems' best-selling The Pigeon HAS to Go to School! (Hyperion Books, 2019) has the obstinate, nay-saying feathered scholar starring in the perfect prep book for the first day of school, giving voice to all the fears that youngsters feel before they walk through those epic doors into the world of education. Willems' Pigeon is already a super star, joining the notable, multiple award-winning Willems' other famed characters-- Knuffle Bunny and Elephant and Piggie, and the rest--who have charmed and guided children so long and so well through their early years. A million parents nervous about first-day anxieties thank you, Mo Willems!

Pounce! Max Attacks by Kathi Appelt

Max is a cute kitty, with four soft little paws.
But at the end of each paw are five sharp little claws.

And Max know just what to do with them...

MAX ATTACKS!

IN A BOWL OF WATER BRIMMING...

FISHES! LOTS OF FISHES SWIMMING.

But just as Max get poised to plunge a clawed paw...

Wait! Is that a lizard on the window? Max whirls away from the fish bowl and leaps, landing spreadeagled on the window screen.

The family watchdog stops the attack, but cannot save the window plant as they both come down. Max leaps away Scot free, while the dog is tagged for the downed drapes.

MAX, ONE.
DOG, NONE.

Max's claws may be retractable,
But Max himself is quite distractible.

Max unhooks each claw from the screen and goes back to the fish bowl. But just as he's about to snag a fish, his toy catnip birdie on a string flaps by! He pounces, his claws penetrate, but the birdie swoops away into the dirty clothes basket. Max turns on a dime. That bird won't escape this time. Hey! Max is the predator. This is what his claws are for!

UP! UP! UH-OH!

WHERE DID THAT BIRDIE GO?

Oh, there it is, in the dirty clothes basket! And what are those stinky things in the basket? Ooooh!
Socks rock! Max pounces.

SOCKS, NONE.

MAX, NINETY-ONE!

Full of bravado, Max goes back to the fish bowl.

The fish are swimming, still accessible.
This time will Max's attack be successful?

Or will little Max wind up all wet? Suffice it to say, for Kathi Appelt's latest, Max Attacks (Atheneum Books, 2019), no goldfish were harmed in the production of this picture book. Despite his prowess at attacks and his claw-ful paws, kitten Max fails as a carnivore but succeeds as a charmer, in the Newbery-winning Appelt's adorable rhyming cat tale for young readers, while illustrator Penelope Dullaghan creates an irresistibly lovable striped kitty who switches his twitchy tale, licks his small whiskers, and pauses before pouncing like any proper kitten would do. With its big bold illustrations shown from varying prospectives and its intriguing rhymes, this one is the cat's pajamas for reading aloud to one or a group. Puns Kirkus Reviews, "Max's actions should win plenty of accolades: Max, a million; readers a million-plus."  More Max, Ms. Appelt!

Kathi Appelt was the winner of a John Newbery Medal for her brilliant middle-grade novel, The Underneath (See my review here.)

Watch Out forThose Black Holes! Llama Destroys the World by Jonathan Stutzman

"I AM LLAMA!" LLAMA PROCLAIMED. (on Friday)

That's pretty tough talk, but on Monday all Llama does is eat cake, lots of cake.

THAT WAS HIS FIRST MISTAKE (one that leads to the Ultimate Doom of Everything.)

On Tuesday Llama is more rotund than before, but he is still determined to struggle into his dancing pants, now too tight.

That is not a great idea, either, since the pants are bound to rip--an unfortunate event which leads to the Cosmic Vibrations which lead to ... A Rip in the Fabric of the Universe!

Llama should have consulted Einstein first!

It's into a Black Hole by Friday, for the world and Llama and all, in Jonathan Stutzman's loony llama tale of a doozy of a disaster. But not to worry--all's well that ends with everything back in place by Saturday, thanks to illustrator Heather Fox, who puts Llama and and the rest of the cosmos back in place where it all started, this time with no cake! But, Wait! Is that pie? Don't tell Llama! Oh, NO!

There are a plenty of funny sight gags and a double-page blackout during the unfortunate black hole event, to keep kids giggling in this first book by husband and wife team Stutzman and Fox, Llama Destroys the World (Henry Holt and Company, 2019).  "Dessert has never seemed so epic." says, Publishers Weekly's starred review.

Shakeup? Shakedown? Abner and Ian Get Right-Side Up by Dave Eggers

The curtain has gone up...

and so have the actors, apparently. Abner and Ian are sideways, perpendicular to the earth, itself a vague silhouette on the backdrop.

"Uh-oh."

"What?"

"Can't you see? We're sideways!"

Yes, Dear Reader, it's happened again. You have opened a meta-book, one of those interactive volumes where the characters expect you to do all of the work.

"We can ask that kid," suggests Abner.

"Hey, Kid! Do us a favor. Shake the book, then turn the page!"

Well, they're not stuck on the side of the page anymore. Now they are suspended from the top.

Ian is dubious about the efficacy of under-aged plot movers, but he's getting too woozy to argue.

Luckily, Abner is an experienced reader. He's cites that story where the author tells you to shake the book, and when you do everything is fixed. Ian says he's familiar with the genre, and after some banter, the two manage to cooperate on the cue.

NOW!

Nope! The Kid cooperates, but each shake seems to make things worse. Abner and Ian find themselves joined at the hip in the book's center seam. How do they get out of the gutter? More shakes find them disambiguated and discombobulated. It's time to try something different.

"Kid? Can you turn out the light and count to ten? We'll meet you on page 76."

And finally, Abner and Ian, feet planted on terra firma, should be ready to start the story, in Dave Eggers' latest theater of the absurd picture book, Abner and Ian Get Right-Side Up (Little, Brown and Company, 2019). But will they? Now Abner and Ian need a nap! All they need is for someone to close the book and make it be nice and dark in there. The End.

In this latest, a sort of spoof of Herve' Tullet's graphic metabooks such as Press Here Game and Mix It Up (Interactive Books for Toddlers, Learning Colors for Toddlers, Preschool and Kindergarten Reading Books) and Bill Cotter's Don't Push the Button! and sequels, artist Laura Park lets the illustrations tell the meta-story with some charm and wry humor. This one is a fun read-aloud for grown-ups (who will appreciate some sophisticated asides planted for them by the author) and especially for youngsters who cut their literary teeth on Mo Willems' Elephant and Piggy early reader series. Says Booklist, "A mind changer for anyone who every thought reading was a sedate occupation!"

The Elephant in the, Um, Intersection: Poe Won't Go by Kelly DePucchio

Prickly Valley has a public problem.

One morning the good people awoke to find an elephant sitting smack dab in the middle of the only road in town.

His name was Poe.

It didn't take long for a traffic jam to form around the uninvited elephant.

Not exactly what everyone wants--a sedentary elephant in the center of the roadway!!

The city's sole thorofare is not passable. Nobody's going anywhere in Prickly Valley until that pachyderm is persuaded to get a move on. Honking horns don't faze him. Parking tickets don't work. Pot-and-pan percussion is not persuasive. Trombone glissandos don't do it. Politicians' orations and proclamations fizzle.

People begged. PLEASE?

And booed. JEEZ!

And bribed. CHEESE?

Mice fail. Magnets don't avail. A magician's disappearing spells don't prevail.

When will Poe go? Nevermore?

Until one little girl named Marigold poses the pertinent question.

"Has anyone asked Poe why he won't GO?"

Marigold is fluent in kitten and articulate in hedgehog, so she agrees to interpret for Poe.

"He says he's waiting for a friend. His friend is very late."

But his expected pal is a lot closer than Poe knows. He's not under Poe's nose, exactly, but even, er, closer... in Kelly DiPucchio's latest, Poe Won't Go (Disney Hyperion, 2018). Author DePucchio's way with a well-placed rhyme and appreciation of absurd plot twists (the townspeople try to lift the recalcitrant pachyderm off his bum with bunches of helium balloons) make for plenty of giggle-bait for youngsters with well-planted page turns. The artwork and hand-lettered text by illustrator Zachariah Ohora is outstanding in its ability to evoke the absurdity of the whole situation and encourage scrutiny of the many characters in the crowd. This one is an engaging read-aloud for preschoolers and a fun read-alone for young readers.

Something in Common: Narwhal, Unicorn of the Sea! by Ben Clanton

One day when Narwhal was out for a swim, he found himself in new waters.

"Whoa! What are YOU?" asked Jellyfish

"Me?" said Narwhal. "I'm Narwhal, the Narwhal. The Unicorn of the Sea."

"I'm a jellyfish," said Jellyfish.

"You don't look like any fish I've ever seen, but you do look kind of jelly-ish," replies Narwhal.

The two regard each other skeptically, each wondering if the other is a figment of his imagination.

Jellyfish is agog. A fish with a horn on his head? . (A tusk-tooth, actually, Narwhal points out.)

"I can't believe this! The thing I am imagining imagines that it's imagining ME!"

It's a weird way to start a friendship, but the ebullient and energetic Narwhal and the dour and wishy-washy jellyfish are somehow drawn to each other despite their differences. If such strange things as themselves exist in the sea, what other unimagined sights might they see? As the two set forth for a swim in new waters in search of more undersea novelty, they do discover an unsuspected commonality--they both love waffles. (Don't ask!)

"NOM NOM!" said Jellyfish.

Along their watery way, the duo meet other remarkable creatures, which Narwhal names: A shark ("Gnarly!"), a sea Turtle ("Turtley!"), an octopus ("Tentacular!"), all candidates for their new circle of friends--

"NARWHAL'S POD OF EXCELLENCE"

Ben Clanton's new Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea (A Narwhal and Jelly Book 1) (Tundra Books, 2017) offer three silly stories about this dynamic oceanic duo, told in comic-book-framed format, with plenty of humorous banter between the unlikely comrades, just right for primary readers who are looking for a touch of subtle and sophisticated humor in their easy-reading literature. Clanton's less-is-more artwork is reminiscent of masters of the genre such as P. D. Eastman and Syd Hoff, with simple blackline drawings backed by skillful use of color. As Kirkus Reviews puts it succinctly in their starred review, "Undersea adventures have never been so darn cute!"

Classic Confrontation! The Legend of Rock, Paper, Scissors by Drew Daywalt

Long ago, in an ancient and distant realm called the "Kingdom of Backyard, there lived a warrior named Rock.

Rock was the strongest in all the land, but he was sad because no one could give him a worthy challenge.

Rock is rowdy, rough, and reckless, ignorant of the challengers who live just beyond the bounds of his fiefdom in the Great Manor House--the mythic heroes, Paper and Scissors.

In the Empire of Mom's Home Office rules the powerful Paper, whose joust with Computer Printer ends with Paper's best tactic--the Jam. And in the Kitchen Realm, in the tiny village of Junk Drawer, dwells Scissors, who easily holds sway, sharply besting Freezer's icy minions, dinosaur-shaped frozen chicken nuggets. These Champions of the Indoor Domain are also spoiling for the Battle of the Century.

Word spreads throughout the Known World that a detente has been declared until the three mighty conquerors can meet on the field of honor, the Wasteland of Two-Car Garage! In the Battle of the Century (um, make that several centuries,), it's a showdown between mythical opponents who, it must be said, live on in legendary lore as the iconic Keepers of the Peace among kids, providing a fast and peaceful, not to mention hands-on, method of settling disputes.

Two kings of picture book comedy combine their powers in The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors (Balzer and Bray, 2017) in the, er, blockbuster book of the season. Author Drew Daywalt, the venerated Chronicler of Crayons (in his mega-hits, The Day the Crayons Quit, and sequel, The Day the Crayons Came Home) tells his tale of the battle of the titans well, with his mighty comrade in arms, stalwart artist Adam Rex providing the boldly clever and comedic warriors whose deeds will keep kids in gales of giggles. The critics can't bestow enough accolades for this one, passing out enough stars in their reviews to keep Daywalt's and Rex's family escutcheons long shining brightly in the picture book firmament.

Spoiler! Giraffes Ruin Everything by Heidi Schulz

What do you know about giraffes?

They have long necks. They have long legs. They are quiet and gentle.

But that's not all.

Giraffes spoil everything!

Take you average birthday party. The kids are well-dressed and behave nicely. But a giraffe will stick his long neck across the table, and with that long tongue he can lick up most of the cake. No ice cream cone in the room is safe. And that pitcher of punch? One glug down that long throat, and it's history.

At the movies he blocks the view of anyone behind him, all the way back to the last row.

You'd think, wouldn't you, that a giraffe would be an asset at a basketball game. I mean, dunking the ball is a sure thing for a sixteen-foot-tall center, right?

But nobody scores when the giraffe sticks his head up and through the hoop.

Giraffes spoil everything.

Except, maybe when you get your friend's brand-new kite stuck high in a tree, in Heidi Schulz's Giraffes Ruin Everything (Bloomsbury Press, 2016). Sometimes you have to take the bitter with the sweet, and when it comes to an unusual friend, his virtues may just  be the flip side of his vices. Artist Chris Robinson's slightly retro illustrations make the most of the mischief that a long-legged, long-necked giraffe can get into, and both the narrative and the artwork have nostalgic touches of Dr. Seuss' If I Ran the Zoo (Classic Seuss) or H.A. Rey's evergreen Curious George Flies a Kite, not to mention a final page dominated by an huge, house-wrecking elephant--a witty wink and a nod toward a future sequel. "A heartwarming lesson of learning to understand and accept friends as they are," says School Library Journal.

The Fall of the House of Wax: Wax by Gina Damico

The town of Paraffin smelled of wax.

It smelled of Citrus Dreams, Tahiti Sunsets, The Night before Christmas, New Car Leather.... Spice and musk and tea and rum. Love and home and peace and America. The town of Paraffin smelled of everything. At the same time.

Each scent layered on top of the other, mixing, fusing and swelling into an odorous abomination.

Other than that, Paraffin was a lovely place to live.

And Poppy Paladino, chief nerd of the theater nerd clique at Paraffin High, has reason to believe that something is rotten in the quaint town of Paraffin.

A picture-perfect Vermont town, Paraffin is nevertheless the fiefdom of the aptly surnamed Chandler family, Anita and Preston, heirs of the century-old Grosholtz Candle Works, a mecca for school field trips and foliage-seeking sightseers, a snare for senior citizen tour buses and the source of products for thousands of scented candle stores in malls everywhere.

The too spooky-perfect Chandlers, sleek jet-setters who rule the town with their perfectly manicured hands, are set to preside over their BiScentennial Celebration, when Poppy and her best friend Jill decide to cash in their celebratory coupons at the candle store which fronts the castle-shaped waxworks. Wandering away from the crowded sales floor, Poppy ventures down the labyrinthine halls and meets up with a very strange old woman, Madame Grosholtz, who confides that she is the spiritual daughter of Madame Tussaud herself and leads Poppy to a warehouse of hollow molded wax figures, all bearing an uncanny resemblance to local townspeople. Madam Grosholtz gives her a special candle and hints that it will reveal something for Poppy's eyes only as it burns. The eerie sight of  a  wax likeness of Smitty, the donut shop owner, and Mrs. Goodwin, her neighbor, remind Poppy of the old-timey horror story of the "hollow people" who escape from the candle works from time to time

Poppycock, thinks Poppy, as she drives Jill home. But when she parks her car at her house, a figure of a teenaged boy pops out of her trunk, fully grown but as innocent and unschooled as a baby. Poppy passes him off as Dud, an exchange student from Tristan d' Cunha assigned to board with them, to her parents. But then she notices his skin is never warm or cool, always room temperature, and a flickering flame can be seen in his throat. He's a ... Hollow, but a seemingly benign one.

But then Poppy begins to notice that there's something strange about Mr. Lincoln, her principal, and then even Mr. Crawford, the dreamboat biology teacher for whom she's long had a crush. And then Smitty at the doughnut shop seems to have an abnormal fear of spilled hot coffee, and soon Poppy realizes that one by one, the people of Paraffin are being replaced by Hollows, wax Stepford Wife-ish clones of themselves. Written beneath the wax of Mdm. Grosholtz' ever-burning candle she learns that the Chandlers are themselves wax clones of their nineteenth-century selves, living in replaceable wax molds which they have compelled the imprisoned Madame Grosholtz to carve for them as they age. And somehow these living Hollows are scheming to destroy the real people of Paraffin, replacing them one by one with their own "living" wax figures. Poppy confides her discovery to Jill and recruits her fellow theater people, the Giddy Committee, to help with her plan to stop the deadly Chandlers before they and all their families are turned to wax.

And then Poppy discovers something terrifying.

Poppy ignored Jill, keeping her eyes on Greg, as she rammed her elbow into the light switch. The room went dark.

Poppy kept her focus squarely on Greg's mouth, expecting a lot of flickering going on in that throat of his.

Nothing. No light in his mouth.

But in the corner of her eye, two small flickering points of light remained.

One in Dud's mouth.

And one in Jill's.

Jill herself a Hollow.

Is the plan already blown, or can Poppy foil the Hollow Jill, and perhaps save her real best friend from the Chandler's deadly Potion?

Gina Damico's forthcoming Wax (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) features a sort of Return-of-the-Body-Snatchers-cum-Madame-Tussaud's plotline. Pleasantly creepy, with a properly improbable premise, but with a little willing suspension of belief, what a glow Damico gets going as her plot heats up to the melting point. Poppy is an irrepressibly perky teen heroine with smarts and spunk and a touch of snark in this humorous and offbeat take on a Revenge of the Theater Nerds story. Fans of the tongue-in-cheek horror novel genre will warm to this waxily wacky tall tale of small-town terror.

Damico is also the author of the popular Croak series.

(Yawn!) Meet the Dullards by Sara Pennypacker

ONE DAY MR. AND MRS. DULLARD HAD A NASTY SURPRISE.

The Dullards found their children reading--books!

Then their kids, Blanda, Borely, and little Dud, tried to slip outside to play. Next they're going to want to go to school, their parents fretted!

"WHERE DID WE GO WRONG?" SAID MRS. DULLARD.

"PERHAPS IT'S THIS PLACE," SPECULATED MR. DULLARD. "LAST FALL, I REMEMBER, THE LEAVES CHANGED COLOR.

IT'S LIKE A CIRCUS AROUND HERE."

The Dullards decide to try a move to a duller part of town. They repaint the new place, first debating over whether gray walls will remind the kids of paved roads and over-stimulating travel.

THAT COULD MAKE THE KIDS WANT TO GO SOMEWHERE.

Brown paint is nixed for fear it might inspire a desire to try pottery making. The Dullards settle on a mixture of the two--greige, a color guaranteed not remind anyone of anything anybody wants to think about for long.

With the environment suitably quieting, it's time for a little family togetherness time.

Leading the children away from the unplugged television set, the parents try to divert their attention from the freshly painted walls, like with some nice blank sheets of paper. But, alas....

THEY WERE COMPLETELY MESMERIZED.

ALL DAY LONG THE DULLARDS WATCHED THE PAINT DRY.

Parenting is never easy, and in Sara Pennypacker's Meet the Dullards (Balzer + Bray, 2015), Mr. and Mrs. Dullard are in no danger of be accused of encouraging free-range children. Artist Daniel Salmieri is clearly in on satirizing the hover-parent, attiring his dull, duller, dullest family in flat, shapeless gray garb, while using the illustrative device of the window through which the kids are sometimes seen trying to overstimulate themselves by outdoor play, or even worse, escaping to the circus which has just come to town (stealthily advertised in a poster in the background of one page). Kids will get the spoof, and parents will enjoy the satiric twist on protective parenting, but one reviewer takes an ironic stand: "I appreciated that Pennypacker resolves her story without forcing Mr. and Mrs. Dullard to embrace spontaneity and imagination and color and all the other things that movies and books always insist make life worth living. (Those things do make life worth living, but it's tiresome to keep hearing about it.)" says the curmudgeonly New York Times reviewer Bruce Handy.

More Mutton! The Complete Adventures of Johnny Mutton by James Proimos

ONE DAY MOMMA MUTTON OPENED HER FRONT DOOR AND FOUND THAT A BABY HAD BEEN LEFT ON HER FRONT STEPS.

"B-A-A!"

"YOWZA!"

BUT IT WASN'T JUST ANY BABY.

IT WAS A BABY...

...SHEEP!

BUT MOMMA'S WEAK EYES AND WARM HEART KEPT HER FROM EVEN NOTICING.

And with the convenient surname of Mutton, nobody else seems to object to Johnny's being a sheep either. (Although Mr. Stockman is heard to observe "There's something odd about that boy.")

Johnny Mutton is certainly silly, but so sweet that he gets by with it. When his classmates all bring an apple for their teacher, Johnny brings a bag of Poofy Marshmallows, easier on Mr. Slapdash's false choppers. At Halloween, when all his friends show up as pirates or witches, Johnny Mutton comes costumed as a runny nose, with two long green socks hanging out of the nasal openings. Luckily, he meets his certain soulmate, Gloria Crust, attired as a giant box of tissues.

Momma Mutton is a terrific basketball player, but Johnny can't shoot, dribble, or catch a pass, except in his mouth. But Momma is understanding when Johnny reveals his secret desire.

"I WANT TO SWIM IN THE WATER BALLET."

Johnny Mutton went on to become a national hero by winning twenty gold medals in the Olympics for water ballet.

Whether it's bonding with his nemesis Mandy Dinkis in the dark in a game of Hide and Seek, or playing Pin The Tail On The Jell-o at his surprise birthday party for Gloria, matriculating at Mrs. Bottom's School of Manners, or showing scary Old Man Stagglemyer how to skateboard, Johnny Mutton is always...er... well,...

SO HIM!

James Proimos' brand-new compendium of Johnny Mutton cartoons, The Complete Adventures of Johnny Mutton (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), is guaranteed goofiness, certified silliness, and warranted wacky stuff. Great for fans of Harry Allard's and James Marshall's The Stupids series, Dav Pilkey's The Dumb Bunnies and Captain Underpants series, and Lincoln Peirce's Big Nate series, Proimos' over-the-top cartooning and pizazz-y zany stories are fluffy but rib-tickling fare for reluctant readers or giggle groupies.

Sweet Revenge! The Dunderheads by Paul Fleischman

"Never" sneered Miss Breakbone, "have I been asked to teach such a scraped-together, fiddling, twiddling, time-squandering, mind-wandering, doodling, dozing, don't-know dunderheads!"

In a cast-iron military gray suit, with a blood-red mouth, Miss Breakbone is the scariest teacher character yet, one who delights in adding a gold star to her "Crybabies Chart" whenever she makes one of her charges cry. Her imagined means of torture include a knotted scourge, a nail-studded club, and an electric chair bought with the proceeds of goods confiscated from her students.

But she has a fatal flaw:

Mistake Number 2: She has no eye for talent, an easy mistake to make in our case.

Talent there is among those dunderheads in her much maligned class. And when she gleefully confiscates the green-eyed, one-eared cat figurine that little "Junkyard" gleaned from the trash for his mom's birthday gift, Miss Breakbone has gone too far. Student "Einstein" (a whiz at problem-solving) plots a plan to carry off a cat burglary of her grimly defended house using the special "talents" of his class of "differently abled" dunderheads.

"Pencil" draws the layout of the grounds and house from memory, "Spider" scales the walls, while with a well-placed missile "Spitball" disables the motion sensor alarm system. "Clips" utilizes his impressive paperclip grappling lines to hoist the kids inside, and "Google-Eye" hynotizes the staff while the rest of the class carries off the heist of the one-eared cat, whose green eyes turn out to be priceless emeralds, leaving behind only a note for Miss Breakbone:

THE DUNDERHEADS WERE HERE.

Newbery Award-winning author Paul Fleischman's latest picture/beginning chapter book features lovable knuckleheads who prove their mettle and avenge a wronged comrad in his new The Dunderheads (Candlewick, 2009), all ably portrayed by comic artist David Roberts. Kids who earlier learned to love to hate Miss Viola Swamp will relish Miss Breakbone's well-deserved comeuppance with glee.