My Weird School 10 – Mr. Docker Is off His Rocker!

Dan Gutman's Mr. Docker Is off His Rocker is a fizzing, potato-powered school comedy for 8 year olds about a boy who's decided science is for nerds.

What happens

It's book ten of My Weird School. A.J. is going to be a football player when he grows up (the American kind, with lots of tackling). So why on earth does he need science?

Then the new science teacher rolls in on something that looks like an old lawnmower, crashes into the blackboard and pulls a potato out of his lab coat. Mr. Docker is a retired scientist. He's eighty, his grey hair sticks out in every direction and he REALLY loves potatoes.

His lessons are brilliant. There's a clock that runs on two potatoes, a film canister that shoots up and bounces off the ceiling and a prism that throws a rainbow onto the wall. One experiment sets his own hair on fire! (He runs out of the room pretty fast for an old guy.)

Then on a field trip he eats a beetle grub straight out of a log. He also has a laboratory at home. Put it all together and the gang decide he must be a mad scientist. So on Saturday they go on a spying mission to his house.

Meanwhile A.J. has a much bigger worry. Andrea says she knows what A.J. stands for. Nobody knows that! So now he has to be NICE to her, which is pretty much the worst thing that could happen to him.

A.J. hands you his advice as he goes, like the one thing to say when you're stuck for a comeback. He's sure he knows exactly why the sky is blue (he doesn't). It's very much like being in the playground with him and his mates.

If you've got a child who asks "why?" about absolutely everything, there's a lot to enjoy here. Some proper science sneaks in too, and there's a lovely moment when A.J.'s own head starts buzzing with questions.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

A.J. forgets to feed his fish before a holiday and it dies, and he then presents that as his science fair experiment. It's played completely for laughs, but a child who's recently lost a pet might not find it funny. If your reader likes their jokes on the cheeky side, it's one of the biggest laughs in the book.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, try Ms. Hannah Is Bananas. This time it's art that A.J. is sure is stupid, and the new teacher wears a dress made of pot holders and doesn't own a bin.