Cherchez La Femme! Hug It Out! (Big Nate by Lincoln Pierce

Big Nate, the middle schooler class slacker, is plugging his way through sixth grade, complaining that his teacher Mrs. Godfrey's loud voice is keeping him from sleeping in class. And that's not ALL! His friend Francis is still a fount of annoying trivia facts, his grandparents volunteer to chaperone the field trip to the museum, and the class pet, Sherman the Hamster, is still sulking sarcastically under his shavings.

"YOU'RE SO LUCKY, SHERMAN. YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO TO SCHOOL LIKE WE DO.

NO TESTS, NO HOMEWORK, NO SCREAMING TEACHERS..."

(AND A 4-YEAR LIFESPAN.
SHUT UP, KID.)

Big Nate gets to catch up on his napping when he gets beaned in a baseball game, but then Mrs. Godfrey does more than keep Nate from snoozing in class. His conference with her scares him sleepless!

"I'M SURE YOU'RE AWARE, NATE THAT YOU'RE IN DANGER OF NEEDING TO ATTEND SUMMER SCHOOL. I'D SAY SOME TUTORING IS IN ORDER BEFORE THE FINAL EXAM.

I'LL SELECT YOUR TUTOR."

And so Big Nate finds his fate is in the hands of his arch-nemesis, GINA, the most annoying know-it-all in the class. Will a late spring cram session save Big Nate's summer?

Against the odds, his tutor Gina pulls it off and Big Nate makes a 94 on the final exam. School's out and Nate is free to be... a summer slacker!

But fate steps in at... of all places, at the amusement park, where Francis loses his lunch on the UPCHUCKER, and Nate finds himself paired on THE FLAMETHROWER with a girl--a girl he's never seen before... and...

SHE'S WICKED CUTE!

Big Nate is IN LOVE, but the cute girl disappears into the crowd before Nate can even find out her name, and now his summer vacation suddenly has MEANING and PURPOSE, in Lincoln Pierce's Big Nate: Hug It Out! (Volume 21) in his mega-popular graphic book series. Although Pierce's cartoon books are categorized as light humorous fare for middle readers, his comic skills have  gained plenty of more mature followers as well, continuing his best-seller status---along with those other hit cartoon graphic series, Dav Pilkey's The Adventures of Captain Underpants: Color Edition and Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Diary of a Wimpy Kid 1). Share this one with Pierce's latest, Big Nate: Blow the Roof Off! (Volume 22) and Big Nate: The Gerbil Ate My Homework (Volume 23).

Holiday Expandinator: It's Halloween. I'm Turning Green! bhy Dan Gutman

I still can't get over the fact that on Halloween people just hand you candy and you don't even have to pay for it or anything! Halloween is the best holiday of all.

By now the streets were filled with lots of kids out trick-or-treating. We saw some pretty scary-looking costumes. Then I saw the most hideous, horrifying creature in the history of the world.

It was Andrea Young. And she was with her crybaby friend Emily. "We're good witches, not bad witches," Andrea informed us.

I'm a mutant zombie pirate," said Ryan. Arghhhhhh!"

"I'm the underwerewolf!" said Billy. Grrrrrrrr!"

"My mom told me that violent costumes are inappropriate for children," Andrea said.

The usual suspects are all assembled in Dan Gutman's latest in his My Weird School series, My Weird School Special: It's Halloween, I'm Turning Green! (Harper, 2013). The guys are randomly costumed,  (Billy in his annual appearance in his underpants), with the sole objective of collecting enough candy to last all year, while the girls ;loudly proclaim their plan to donate their candy to poor children and save the world, but before the two groups finish swapping insults, they are menaced by The Halloween Monster, a huge, hairy, black-furred dude who extorts all their loot.

It was the worst thing to happen since TV Turnoff Week!

To console the guys, Andrea persuades them to follow her to the weird Mrs. Yonker's house for a special Halloween treat. As fans of the series know, Mrs. Yonkers is bonkers, and this Halloween she has a new invention, the MicroMole 4000 Expandinator, to try out on her hapless students. And when she turns A. J.'s bite-sized Hershey bar into a confection the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, Arlo is all for giving their diminished cache of candy the Expandinator treatment.

But, as if on cue, who should appear again  but The Halloween Monster.  And this time he's not after their candy; he's after Mrs. Yonker's invention, with which he plans to control the known world! Can even Mrs. Yonkers out-wrestle this threat and make the world safe for the rest of the Weird School year?

The prolific Dan Gutman has several (marginally) more serious series to his credit (The Million Dollar Series, The Genius Files, and his notable historical fiction cum fantasy series, Baseball Card Adventures, all cleverly crafted tales often touted for "reluctant readers," but this one is simply full-fledged super-sized silliness devoted to adventures in the world of the Weird School and its kooky staff and students.  Gutman (or his weary but game editors) even adds a Halloween-themed appendix, replete with "Weird Halloween Facts," (...because it's really important to learn stuff so you won't grow up to be a dumbhead like certain people--Andrea--I know), "Mystery Maze," "Monster Match," "Wacky-Word Story Time," "My Weird School Trivia Questions," and much, MUCH MORE! Sure, it's the bite-sized fiction equivalent of trick-or-treat sweets, but a little bit of silliness, like a spoonful of sugar, makes the rest of the school year go down! Go ahead. Have a Green Halloween!