Rotten School 02 – The Great Smelling Bee

R. L. Stine's The Great Smelling Bee is a gross-out boarding school comedy for 7 year olds about a boy hiding two pets he's absolutely not allowed to have.

What happens

Bernie Bridges lives at Rotten School. He has the biggest room in his dorm, a friend who brings him breakfast in bed and a smile he's very proud of (just ask him).

Then a huge wooden crate turns up from his parents. Inside are his bulldog, Gassy, and his parrot, Lippy. The trouble is, the school rule is No Pets Allowed. If Mrs Heinie, the dorm mother, finds out, Bernie is on the next bus home.

And Gassy didn't get his name by accident. He can clear a room in seconds.

This is the second Rotten School book and Bernie tells the whole thing himself. He's a total schemer. He smears Mrs Heinie's thick glasses with his thumbs so she can't see the dog on his bed. He tells her the parrot is a new cushion from home. When that stops working, he enrols Gassy in class as a new boy called Barry Bone, school cap and all.

Who wouldn't want to see a bulldog in a French lesson? Barry burps, Bernie "translates", and the teacher is very impressed.

The jokes are fast and most of them are rude. There's drool, bird poo and a lot of smells, plus a parrot who squawks "Go bite a WALNUT!" at anyone who comes near. Bernie's rival Sherman Oaks is always sniffing around too, with a robot cat that behaves far worse than Bernie's real pets.

Bernie is no role model, and he'd happily tell you so. He fibs to teachers, flatters them shamelessly and sells raffle tickets for a prize he hasn't thought of yet. Nobody gets hurt though, and it's all so clearly silly that most readers will just enjoy watching him wriggle out of trouble.

The chapters are short and lots of them end with Bernie in a fresh fix, so "just one more" comes very easily. It's a good pick for a child who likes a cheeky narrator talking straight to them.

What to read next

If they want more of Bernie, the next book is The Good, the Bad and the Very Slimy, where he decides to turn himself into a whole new kid. Good luck with that!