Rotten School 01 – The Big Blueberry Barf-Off!

R. L. Stine's The Big Blueberry Barf-Off is a Rotten School story for 7 year olds about a boy who'll do anything to win a five-hundred-dollar watch.

What happens

It's the first Rotten School book. Bernie Bridges lives at a boarding school where his friend Belzer brings him breakfast in bed every morning. (Good kid, Belzer.)

Bernie is a schemer. He sells T-shirts with his own face on them, made of rope because rope is cheaper. He once charged the second graders two dollars each to watch an eclipse of Mars in the pitch dark.

Then his archenemy Sherman Oaks turns up with a solid gold watch. It has forty-two functions, including a camera, a popcorn maker and a tiny grill. Worse, April-May June, the girl Bernie adores (she doesn't know it yet), is suddenly calling Sherman "Shermy".

Bernie HAS to have that watch. His plan? A pie-eating contest between the two dorms, with his friend Beast as his secret weapon. Beast swallows whole pizzas without chewing.

Bernie tells the story himself, and he's hilarious. He's completely sure he's a genius, even while things go wrong around him. Your reader gets to be in on every plan and watch him talk his way out of trouble with the teachers (the headmaster ends up quacking like a duck).

It's also very, VERY gross, as the title warns you. Burps that peel the paint off walls. Pies shoved in whole. And, at the contest, a lot of blueberry sick.

If your child is squeamish, this probably isn't the one. If they think burps are the funniest thing ever, they'll adore it.

Bernie isn't exactly a role model, and that's the joke. He fibs, he schemes and he tricks people, and it's all so over the top that it's easy to laugh along.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, the next is The Great Smelling Bee. A huge wooden crate arrives from Bernie's parents, and he's convinced there's a giant TV inside.