Your School Is the Best!

by Maggie Hutchings, Felicita Sala (Illustrator)

Overview

This picture book follows the story of an eager cockroach and his family who hitch a ride to school — with hilarious results. For fans of I Don't Want to Be a Frog.

Everyone’s favorite cockroach from Your Birthday Was the Best! is back, and this time he’s going to school . . . and bringing his whole family along for the ride!

From show-and-tell to arts and crafts, this little stowaway can’t wait to try it all . . . and maybe become the new teachers' pet!

Charming, hilarious and just a tiny bit disgusting, this is a school tale with a twist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780735271647
Publisher:	Tundra
Publication date:	05/09/2023
Series:	The Curious Cockroach
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	916,230
Product dimensions:	9.75(w) x 11.31(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	AD370L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

MAGGIE HUTCHINGS is a counselor, family-dispute mediator, writer and artist. She is the author of Unicorn!, Mermaid! and Dragon!, all published by Affirm Press, as well as Your Birthday Was the Best! She lives in Australia.

FELICITA SALA received Italy's Premio Andersen for her work illustrating many books for children, including Your Birthday Was the Best!; Green on Green by Dianne White; She Made a Monster: How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein by Lynn Fulton, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book; Joan Procter, Dragon Doctor by Patricia Valdez; The Octopus Escapes by Maile Meloy; and Ode to an Onion by Alexandria Giardino. She lives in Rome, Italy.

Editorial Reviews

"Perspective determines perception in this comic clash of human and roach viewpoints. . . . Another hilarious outing for the curious cockroach — and readers with strong stomachs." —Kirkus Reviews

"The kooky cockroach’s unwavering, happy-go-lucky obliviousness cannot be exterminated, and this picture book offers laughs along with a dose of gross." —Booklist

From the Publisher

2023-01-12
Perspective determines perception in this comic clash of human and roach viewpoints.

Hutchings’ narrator, the confident cockroach introduced in Your Birthday Was the Best! (2022), enthusiastically celebrates a visit to “your” school (“you” being a light-skinned child with short blond hair). Self-assured but supremely un-self-aware, the roach is certain that you would be sad to realize you forgot to bring them along for show and tell, so the crawlie climbs aboard your backpack—with a crowd of family. After they covertly enjoy some fun classroom activities, your big presentation arrives, so the ebullient insect lets loose by dancing on your teacher’s head. The ensuing panic is cited as evidence of this performance’s success. During a lunchtime game of hide-and-seek, the vermin crawl into your teacher’s lunchbox, precipitating her “little rest” (i.e., dead faint). Later, the narrator wants to join you and draw a picture, but the crayons are too heavy to hold, so they eat several colors instead—and then excrete a pile of rainbow pellets. (Kids, don’t try this at home.) The bug’s final “triumph” is their portrait of you, rendered in the excreted “rainbow paint," which sends the kids screaming from the room but convinces the narrator that such art moves everyone to tears. Sala again provides perfect illustrations: a cheerful elementary classroom with diverse students, a perky individual little face for every roach, and realistic details to reward the inevitable rereading. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Another hilarious outing for the curious cockroach—and readers with strong stomachs. (Picture book. 5-7)

Kirkus Reviews