My Weird School #1: Miss Daisy Is Crazy! (My Weird School)

Rating:
Summary: My 7 year old loves this series
Review: We have the first two, and while to me they seem predictable and too easy to figure out what's going on/what's going to happen, to her it is fun to read about the silly teacher, about a silly school, and she likes reading them.

The book's central character is AJ who is not too fond of school, but really likes football. The teacher, Ms. Daisy, uses various tactics to get the kids in class to use math skills, to read, etc. The principal gets into a discussion with the class about if the school was not a school, what would it be? The kids decide an arcade - so the principal challenges them. If they (and they ends up being the whole school) read a million pages then he will turn the gym into a game arcade for a night.

The main reason that I'm not giving it 5 stars is that there are a lot of stereotype kids - the smart one, the jock, the jokester -who are more like caricatures than true characters. This works okay, but I wish that Mr. Gutman had added more dimensions to the characters.

Last, the reading level is slightly misleading. It says on the back of the book it is for 7-10 years. The story line is probably too simplistic for most 10 year olds (fourth or fifth graders), but the reading level is, at a guess, closer to what an end of third grade reader might be reading ... so if you have an advanced younger kid who could read it on their own it works well, or it would be good reading out loud for early primary grades. My just entering second grader reads at a fourth grade level so for her this is perfect, but others may find it frustrating.