The School Nonsense

Gr 1–5—Six-and-a-half-year-old Rebecca is determined not to be turned into a zombie. Rebecca encounters a flu virus while playing in her backyard and narrowly escapes its attacks thanks to the help of Ernest, a microbe who is her best pal. Rebecca identifies her aggressor as a zombie virus on account of its hideous appearance and its ability to turn those it bites into hunched-over, slobbering, feverish versions of themselves, not unlike zombies. And when the epidemic spread of the virus throughout the school results in near-empty classrooms, the girl's teacher, Mr. Rebaud, helps lift the mood of the class by inviting them to do something spontaneous and nonsensical. Bianco's dialogue works well alongside Dalena's illustrations, and both nicely punctuate the heightened situations the characters find themselves in, particularly Rebecca, who is driven to solve the problem. A great deal of emotion is conveyed through the images, which typically are character-focused with minimal or blank panel backgrounds. Much of the art is from Rebecca's perspective, emphasizing a viewpoint akin to readers'. The panels are small, as is the text, so expect to see kids with noses close to the page, though this does not detract from the overall experience of the story. Readers new to the series need not have read previous installments in order to enjoy this entry.—Matthew C. Winner, Ducketts Lane Elementary School, Elkridge, MD