Jake Drake 3 – Teacher’s Pet

Teacher's Pet by Andrew Clements is a school story for 8 year olds about a boy who gets praised until his life falls apart.

Jake Drake is in fourth grade, looking back at four days in May the year before. He's careful to tell you that they only took a week and felt like four years.

It starts with a computer. Mrs Snavin can't get the new ones to behave, and Jake leans over and shows her which thing to double-click. That's all he does. She tells him he's wonderful, much too loudly, and pats him on the head in front of everyone.

Then she announces to the whole class that Jake is her special computer helper.

By the end of that morning the art teacher has called him sweet twice, in public. By the end of gym he's been given a Medal of Honour for being the first boy knocked out in six games of dodgeball in a row, which is not a thing any child wants to be famous for.

And then the head teacher catches him wiping up his best friend's spilt milk, stops the entire cafeteria, and gives him a bright orange patrol belt to wear all week. He's Garbage Guy before he's finished clearing the table (and the friend who actually made the mess claps along with everybody else).

Every adult in that building thinks they're being kind. Not one of them notices what it's costing him. That gap is the joke, and it's a very good one, because your reader will see it three pages before anyone in the book does.

The best stretch comes later, when Jake works out that the only way free is to be bad. He interrupts. He rips up his own painting. He swings on the gym ropes and yells. Every single attempt is taken as fresh proof of what a marvellous boy he is.

Clements has Jake talk straight to you, in short sentences with his own asides, and it's very easy company.

There is teasing in it. One boy in the class is properly unpleasant, and the nickname sticks around for days, so a child who's been landed with a name they hate will know exactly how that sits.

If they like Jake's company, Bully Buster goes right back to the start, with Jake at three years old in day care working out what a bully is and why they always seem to pick him.