My Weird School 5 – Miss Small Is off the Wall!

Dan Gutman's Miss Small Is off the Wall is a daft school story for 8 year olds about a boy who's waited his whole life for PE and then hates every minute of it.

What happens

It's the fifth My Weird School book. A.J. hates school, but he's sure Fizz Ed will be different (that's "phys ed", the American name for PE, which is the whole joke). He's dreaming of football and dodgeball. Most of all, he wants to beat Andrea Young at something for once.

Then Miss Small comes charging out of the gym office. She's the tallest person A.J. has ever seen, and her idea of PE is balancing peacock feathers, juggling scarves and square dancing. Guess who turns out to be brilliant at all of it?

Andrea, of course. She collects a certificate almost every lesson and A.J. gets crosser and crosser. Meanwhile Miss Small keeps leaping off trampolines and climbing trees. When one of her games lands her in hospital, the kids start to worry about her (she's a quarter of a century old, which they think is ancient).

It's A.J.'s voice the whole way through. Everything is the dumbest thing ever, and he's very funny about the Chicken Dance. You can also hear him slowly, grumpily admitting that the corny playground games are actually quite fun.

If you've got a sporty reader who'd rather run about than sit still, they'll recognise his outrage straight away. And if they've ever been stuck with a partner they didn't choose, the three-legged race will have them giggling.

It's worth knowing that A.J. is properly rude about Andrea. He wishes an asteroid would fall on her, talks about punching her and tells her she can't win a race because she's a girl. It's all cartoonish and Andrea gives as good as she gets. There's also a show-and-tell where she lights three sticks and juggles them while they're on fire, which a younger copycat might need a quick word about.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, Ms. Hannah Is Bananas is the book just before it. It's the same class with a very different teacher, an art lady who never throws anything away, and A.J. is just as sure that art is stupid.