My Weird School 16 – Ms. Coco Is Loco!

Dan Gutman's Ms. Coco Is Loco is a very silly school story for 8 year olds about a boy who hates poetry and a teacher who's convinced he's a genius at it.

What happens

This is book sixteen of My Weird School. It's April, which means National Poetry Month, and Ms. Coco, the gifted and talented teacher, has started talking in rhyme.

A.J. only got into the G and T group because of a test. As far as he's concerned, his real talents are burping the alphabet and making rude noises with his armpits.

When he jokes that there should be a National Sit Around and Do Nothing Month, Ms. Coco makes him write a poem about it. Then Mr. Klutz promises a real live poet if the school writes a thousand poems. (A.J. thought all the poets died a long time ago.)

The trouble is that Ms. Coco LOVES everything he writes. She cries at his poems. She cries at sunrises. She sings "Feelings" at him.

So A.J. finds a shortcut. Poems don't have to rhyme or even make sense, Ms. Coco says. So he throws a box of spelling flash cards in the air and copies down whatever words he picks up. Then he tries writing the worst poem in the world on purpose, all toenail clippings and earwax. She loves that too!

Before long he's running a secret poem business from a cubicle in the boys' toilets, and his customers pay in lunch money.

Andrea, meanwhile, is reading a children's encyclopedia in ABC order and telling A.J. a new animal fact every day (camels have three eyelids, apparently). Keep an eye on those facts.

Reading it is a bit like being stuck in a corridor with A.J. while he talks at you. He's rude about Andrea, very pleased with himself, and he ends one chapter by refusing to tell you his idea unless you keep reading. His poems are written out in full, so there's plenty to read aloud and giggle at.

One small warning. A poem he makes up on the spot for the kindergarten class ends with a bunny being trapped and eaten, and the little ones burst into tears. A very soft-hearted reader might wince, but it's over in a moment and A.J. is the one who looks bad.

If you've got a reader who groans whenever poetry comes up at school, they'll probably feel very seen.

What to read next

Andrea's facts and A.J.'s heckling get a whole book of their own in Fast Facts: Pizza, Peanut Butter, and Pickles, where the same pair argue their way through everything you could ever want to know about food.