The Dark Lord of the School Cellar: The Custodian from the Black Lagoon by Mike Thaler

Somewhere in the dark caverns beneath our school lurks the custodian.

His name is Fester Smudge.

Schoolkids have long wondered about their school custodians. Seldom seen but sometimes heard opening mysterious doors with huge, jangling rings of keys, doors opening onto mysterious bins, buckets, stairs, and worrisome smells, they make their rumbling way through halls, mostly unseen. What do they know? What do they do? Hubie wonders.

I've never seen him because he waits until everyone's gone home before he emerges. He knows all the secret passages and tunnels below the school--just like the Phantom of the Opera.

Older kids whisper rumors of a smoldering fiery dragon, bizarre gurgling noises, and strange music coming from down there in the nether regions of the school. Old stories have been passed down over the years, like the time Fester is said to have electrocuted a visiting convocation speaker with a hot microphone. Freddie says you can tell he's coming by the swarm of flies that accompany him everywhere. Only one thing is certain:

He's trained to make the school boiling hot all summer... and freezing cold all winter.

And then one day it happens! Hubie has a problem opening his locker. And he comes face to face with the feared Fester Smudge, jangling keyrings and all. But all's well that ends with an opened locker, and Hubie is soon his way to class before the bell rings, in Mike Thaler's Custodian From The Black Lagoon (Scholastic/Cartwheel Books). It seems that the fearsome Fester is great guy who polishes his locker handle and wishes Hubie a good day. Whew!

Mike Thaler has a lot of fun with schoolkid folklore about the dreaded deeps* of the school in this tale of the gullible Hubie, The Principal from the Black Lagoon, illustrated in the signature style by cartoonist Jared Lee, who fills the pages with all the fearful and slithery legends beloved of easily duped pupils. For more comic stories of Black Lagoon Elementary, pair this one with Thaler's The Principal from the Black Lagoon.

*Editor's Note: Thaler only exaggerates somewhat. I once asked an experienced janitor what was down in those service tunnels under the school, and he said, "Believe me, you don't want to know!"

Well-Read: The Losers Club by Andrew Clement

A bright red plastic chair sat in the hallway outside the principal's office. The chair was known as the Hot Seat and Alec Spencer was in it.

Alec was a special case. Every time he had landed in the Hot Seat, he'd been caught doing something that teachers usually liked: reading.

You could say Alec Spencer is well read.

He's racked up hundreds of books he's read, and re-read, several times over. Alec uses reading as an escape strategy from everything, and he has become an expert sneak reader, reading during lessons when he needs to be listening and looking. But in sixth grade, when his grades are not even as so-so as usual, his parents are on the warpath, threatening to make sure his next visit to the Hot Seat is going to guarantee a seat in the after-school Homework Room.

Alec makes a deal with his parents. If he gets good weekly reports, he can join the less rigorous after-school Clubs Group instead. He reads the rules closely, and finding a loophole, Alec formulates a plan. He founds a reading club, and to make sure no one will interfere with his obsession, he names his group "the Losers Club" to keep most kids from joining. He suffers the teasing of his sometime friend, Kent, now class bully and current kickball champ of the Active Sports Group who continually calls him "Bookworm."

But Alec gets lucky and even gets the requisite second member in the person of a quiet fourth-grader named Lily. His plan is working. And per parental degree, seated in the center front row in every class, he's forced to pay attention and his grades immediately go up. After all, he's got three hours of undisturbed and officially approved reading to look forward to after school. Alec thinks he's beat the system.

And then he gets another applicant, a cute girl named Nina, a refugee from the Origami Group. She's read Hatchet, and is no fan of show-off Kent. Perfect.

Life is good--until Kent seems to become interested in Nina. He invites her to come over with her brother to shoot baskets on his lighted basketball court and begins to send booming kicks across the gym and onto Alec's table to show off his prowess. It's clearly a challenge that Alec needs to counter, but surprisingly other would-be book lovers are wearying with their clubs and joining his. Even Kent wants to join. Suddenly Alec is the champ reader leader! He has three tables of kids that he has to find just the right books for, and now he has to plan a presentation about his group for the fall PTA meeting.

Life in sixth grade can be complicated, especially with a special girl in the picture, as Alec learns in Andrew Clements' The Losers Club (Random House, 2017), a realistic and humorous coming-of-middle-school-age novel that sensitively explores the transitions that his many fans are experiencing. Clements' characters are well crafted, familiar, but more prototype than stereotype, offering middle readers insight into their own classmates--the groups they choose and the games they play. Author of the landmark best-seller, Frindle: Library Edition and dozens of other top-selling books, Andrew Clements is the phenom of middle-reader fiction. Says Kirkus Reviews' starred review, "Clements once again effectively taps into the challenges of middle school social politics and mapping out one’s identity. This empathetic coming-of-age journey makes it clear how limiting and pointless labels can be, and that both books and real life have quite a bit to offer."