School of Laughs

James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein's School of Laughs is a fast, silly comedy for 9 year olds about a boy comic taking on a principal who wants the school library gone.

What happens

Jamie Grimm's TV show is halfway through its first season. So the cast get five weeks off and Jamie heads back to real middle school, where a lot has changed.

There's a new librarian, Ms Denning. Uncle Frankie is SO smitten that he turns up behind the diner grill in a tweed jacket and drugstore glasses (the lenses are plain glass, he just thinks they make him look clever).

There's a new principal too. Coach Ball used to teach PE, he wants a winning wrestling team, and he wants the library turned into their sweat room. Who needs books when you've got Google?

So Jamie does what Jamie does. He wheels into the middle of a school board visit and does an on-the-spot stand-up set about dinosaurs and the history of the knock-knock joke. It wins Ms Denning a deal. She has until the end of the month to show that most of the school actually uses the library.

Cue popcorn and candyfloss machines borrowed from the TV set, kids streaming in, and two bullies who've just worked out that the school has a library.

It's Jamie talking to you the whole way, joking about everything, including his own chair (he "can't stand for anything", after all). If your reader loves books, there's something lovely about a story where the library is the thing worth fighting for.

It's worth knowing that the bullying is still part of Jamie's life. Stevie calls him "crip", a nasty slur aimed at disabled people. Stevie and Lars tip him out of his wheelchair in a corridor, and the new principal is more bothered about their wrestling technique than about Jamie lying on the floor. Early on Jamie also mentions that his mum, dad and baby sister died. That's backstory, not something that happens here, but it's said plainly.

This is the fifth I Funny book and a lot is already in place by page one. If Jamie's new to your reader, it's worth going back to where the series begins.

What to read next

If the library side of it goes down well, Chris Grabenstein also wrote Mr. Lemoncello's All-Star Breakout Game. It opens with Kyle in trouble for playing a video game on a library computer during reading time, and the school librarian handing out detentions.