SEVEN RULES YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT BREAK IF YOU WANT TO SURVIVE THE CAFETERIA

Name: SEVEN RULES YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT BREAK IF YOU WANT TO SURVIVE THE CAFETERIA
Author: John Grandits
ISBN: 978-0-544-69951-9

by John Grandits ; illustrated by Michael Allen Austin ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 27, 2017

Some solid advice about both the cafeteria and life is embedded in this tongue-in-cheek tale.

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Grandits and Austin team up again to bring readers more school rules that they should (not!) follow.

Kyle, who survived breaking all Ten Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break if You Want to Survive the School Bus (2011), is older now—the bespectacled white lad’s got new interests, mainly all things insect—but he still worries about following the rules. So when a girl on his bus learns he is buying lunch for the first time (horrors!), he follows her advice and takes notes. Will he manage to survive breaking all seven rules, as is inevitable? While some of these rules will be helpful to the elementary or middle school set navigating the lunchroom, others humorously debunk their what-ifs by showing Kyle surviving the worst. They range from not holding up the line or taking too much to remembering to pay, sitting with your classmates (certainly not with the big kids!), and holding onto your tray. Austin’s acrylic, colored pencil, and digital illustrations both wonderfully portray Kyle’s every emotion and hysterically show his imagined metaphors: his class is a column of hungry ants, the lunch lady is an easily annoyed fly on the lookout for trouble, and the sixth-grade bully and his friends are carnivorous water bugs. Refreshingly, the book skips the cliché that school lunches are necessarily bad; the food looks appetizing, and Kyle states it’s very good.

Some solid advice about both the cafeteria and life is embedded in this tongue-in-cheek tale. (Picture book. 5-10)

Pub Date: June 27, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-544-69951-9

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Clarion Books

Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
TEN RULES YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT BREAK IF YOU WANT TO SURVIVE THE SCHOOL BUS
by John Grandits & illustrated by Michael Allen Austin

- BOOK REVIEW
THE TRAVEL GAME
by John Grandits and illustrated by R.W. Alley

- BOOK REVIEW
BLUE LIPSTICK
by John Grandits & illustrated by John Grandits

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TALES FOR VERY PICKY EATERS

by Josh Schneider & illustrated by Josh Schneider ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2011

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Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)

Pub Date: May 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Clarion Books

Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
ULTRABOT'S FIRST PLAYDATE
by Josh Schneider ; illustrated by Josh Schneider

- BOOK REVIEW
KID AMAZING VS. THE BLOB
by Josh Schneider ; illustrated by Josh Schneider

- BOOK REVIEW
EVERYBODY SLEEPS (BUT NOT FRED)
by Josh Schneider ; illustrated by Josh Schneider

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STINK AND THE MIDNIGHT ZOMBIE WALK

From the Stink series

by Megan McDonald & illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 13, 2012

This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the...

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An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.

This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.