Strangeville School Is Totally Normal

Darcy Miller's Strangeville School Is Totally Normal is a wildly silly school story for 9 year olds about a new boy who just wants to fit in at the least normal school ever.

What happens

Harvey Hill has been to four new schools in four years. He'd like this one to go quietly. He has wavy brown hair, thirty-seven freckles, a camera that belonged to his grandpa and a secret he really doesn't want anyone to discover.

Then he hears the morning announcements. The principal is recovering from a piranha incident in a drinking fountain. The janitor has fixed that by releasing baby crocodiles into the pipes. And everyone is asked, very politely, not to anger the third floor's supply closet.

Harvey thinks it's a joke. It isn't!

Within an hour he's crawling through an air vent after the class rat, Cuddles, who may have eaten a growth serum from a science fair project. He's getting bigger by the minute. Dodgeball involves a bowling ball and a cannonball. And the school nurse wants to cut his foot off (it's fine, it just smells a bit).

His guide is Stella Cho, lead reporter for the school paper, who has been investigating the supply closet for months. Teachers keep disappearing and she's determined to find out why.

Half the fun is the voice telling the story. It keeps wandering off to tell you all about goldfish or flugelhorns, then gives itself a shake and gets back to Harvey. There are running jokes everywhere, like the whole school peering at Harvey's perfectly average elbows.

It's cartoon mayhem all through these first chapters. A baby crocodile does bite the maths teacher's foot, with a little blood, and Harvey faints. Nobody else seems bothered, which is the joke.

Underneath all that there's a lonely boy who thinks being different is the worst thing in the world. Stella doesn't agree. As far as she's concerned, weird is good. Isn't that worth hearing at any school?

What to read next

If your reader loves a narrator who can't stay on topic and a girl reporter chasing a Big Story, try Greta Zargo and the Amoeba Monsters from the Middle of the Earth. Greta writes for her local paper, and her Big Story is wobbling up out of a hole at the bottom of her garden.