The Lessons of History: OH, NO! NOT AGAIN! by Mac Barnett

WHAT A DISASTER!

LUCKILY, THERE IS A SIMPLE SOLUTION.

I JUST NEED TO BUILD A TIME MACHINE AND CHANGE HISTORY.

Is our girl genius going to head off a world-wide disaster--an earthquake, a plague, an asteroid strike, maybe?

Well, no. Her personal disaster is missing the first question on her history test.

In what country do we find the oldest prehistoric cave paintings?

She said Belgium. Her teacher says France.

Undeterred by the old saw that you can't change history and the examples of those fictional characters who have run into difficulties back in time, our bespectacled supernerd quickly fashions a time machine from a discarded wading pool and a few knickknacks lying around the basement. The solution to her problem is simply to make a flying trip back to Belgium in 33,000 BCE with a few art supplies, leave a cave painting in an obvious spot, and voila! Instant A+ exam!

There are a few initial glitches. Our girl's first trial take her a lit-tle too far back in time, where she gets to witness the first fish crawling out of the sea and trading gills for lungs. Back to the old drawing board to calibrate the machine a bit. But, ooops! This time she lands in 1815 in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars.

But the third time is the charm. It's proto-Belgium: 33,000 BCE, and yay! There are two unemployed Neanderthal guys just hanging out around the cave. Our girl genius hauls out the art stuff and hands out paint brushes and a palette.

Hmmmm. It's seems that the ache to create has not yet appeared in these lads' genome. One goofs around for a giggle by sticking the brushes up his nose. (Apparently that elementary school gag gene had been expressed even back then.) The other Neander-artist tries a bite of the palette. After her inept cave dudes turn out to be duds, our girl genius grabs the spray-paint cans out of their hands and zooms inside the cavern to do the deed herself.

Mission accomplished, a stylish robot painted on the cave wall, she emerges, ready to fly back to the future where her A+ test will be waiting on her desk, only to find that her prehistoric pals have been taking her time travel trike out to tool around in time, returning with a few souvenirs of their sojourns with a Roman chariot and Napoleon's chapeau. OH, NO!

"THIS MIGHT AFFECT THE HISTORY TEST!"

You know it!

As they did in their hit, Oh No!: Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World, (see my review here) Mac Barnett and Dan Santat combine talents to tell another far-fetched fantasy tale in hilarious cinematographic graphic style in their just published Oh No! Not Again!: (Or How I Built a Time Machine to save History) (Or at Least My History Grade) (Hyperion, 2012).

Our girl genius, like all time-travel protagonists, learns the trying truth that it's hazardous to history (and to your history quiz grade) to make even the tiniest change in old Father Time. The sight gags Santat adds to his bold illustrations (viz. the two Neanderthals pressing the enticing buttons on the spray cans, pointing them unfortunately to paint their own faces) set off Barnett's quirky tale to a T for Time. The imaginative design elements include endpapers showing the blueprints for the time machine, an appended map of The Loop Time Travel Service, and a dust jacket which reverses to reveal a movie poster.

"Barnett’s deadpan prose and Santat’s page-popping art hilariously reveal what happens when you mess with history, while delivering a light message about the perils of perfectionism," says the Publishers Weekly reviewer.

Dyna-Math! Math Attack by Joan Horton

It was Monday at school and our teacher Miss Glass,
Announced, "Now it's time for arithmetic, class.
Can somebody tell me what's seven times ten?"
She was looking at me when she said it again.

I was thinking so hard all my circuits were loaded.
Then all of a sudden, my brain just exploded.

A temporary attack of dyscalcula causes our heroine a catastrophic overflow in the number processing part of her brain. Numbers spew forth, stampeding her classmates, who dash out of the room to escape the ricocheting digits. The nurse begins her triage with a question about causation.

But every time our heroine repeats the problem which caused the eruption, more numbers flood forth. The police are called, but when she repeats the offending problem to the investigating officer, the renewed cascade of numbers sends the police scampering. Downtown the numbers bounce and stick to everything, driving the dogs to bark exponentially, totalling telephone numbers and setting the town clock bonging madly. Down at the town grocer's, Millie's cash register spouts amounts which change all the prices in the place.

Back at the school, the Channel8 News
Arrived with their TV equipment and crews.
"We're live from the school," the anchorman said.
The camera zoomed in for a view of my head.
"How did this happen?" he asked me. "And when?"
I told him, "It happened on seven times ten."

Just as the National Guard appears, only to run for their lives, the heroine gets the gears turning upstairs, and out pops the product in question from her overheated brain.

70!
"Three cheers!" yelled the crowd. "At last," Miss Glass sighed.
"Ten-four," said the cops. My classmates high-fived.

There are not many picture books out there which can provide a fun introduction to (or respite from) times table drill for the third-grade math class. Joan Horton's Math Attack! is a clever story in rhyme which diagnoses a serious problem of math block, with Kristen Brooker's lively and humorous illustrations which are sure to multiply the laughs from primary math classes all over.

School Days: First Day Jitters by Julie Danneborg

"Sarah, dear, it's time to get up for school," Mr. Hartwell said, poking his head through the bedroom doorway. "You don't want to miss the first day at your new school, do you?"

"I'm not going," said Sarah. "I don't want to start over again. I hate my new school!"

It's a seasonal rerun of the first day of school. Sarah burrows back under the covers and pulls the pillow over her face. Entreaties about all the wonderful new friends waiting to be made cut no ice with her.

"That's just it. I don't know anybody and it will be hard and . . . .I just hate it, that's all."

Mr. Hartwell reminds Sarah that the school is expecting her, and amid visions of police cruisers unloading search parties, and schoolkids peering under desks and into lockers, she grumpily begins to yank her shirt over her head. Mr. Hartwell hands over some toast and a full lunchbox and, still watched by their bemused cat and dog, stuffs her quickly into the car. Sarah ducks low in her seat, and barely able to breathe, suffers first day jitters all the way to the door of the school.

There's no escape when Sarah arrives, though, as Principal Burton spots the car and bustles over, surrounded by a hoard of excited kids, to propel Sarah down the busy hall and into her new classroom, where a room full of curious kids swivel around to stare at her arrival. Mrs. Burton leads Sarah to the front of the room and clears her throat.

Class, attention, please!" she intones.

"Class, I'd would like you to meet...your new teacher, Mrs. Sarah Jane Hartwell!"

Illustrator Judy Love does a great job of cleverly keeping most of Sarah Jane under wraps and out of sight as she is hustled along all the way to her place at the head of her class. Although there are perhaps a few hints that Sarah Hartwell is more than a kid, we see mostly her bare feet sticking out of the covers, and the top of her head as she is bustled into the car and into the school. Julie Danneborg's First Day Jitters has a hilarious surprise ending as the reader realizes that it's a new teacher who is in the throes of those familiar first-day fears, suffering along with her students as they worry about starting all over again with a new class. A great read aloud for the night before the first day or for a new teacher's break-the-ice read-along for the beginning of a new school year.