The Terrible Two

Jory John and Mac Barnett's The Terrible Two is a school story for 9 year olds about a boy who arrives at a new school and finds somebody has beaten him to it.

What happens

Miles Murphy has been moved to Yawnee Valley. Rolling hills, creeks, cows as far as you can see. There's a statue in the town square of a cow that was once elected mayor by a balloting error (and then re-elected, on record approval ratings).

Miles is not interested in cows. Miles is interested in pranks.

At his old school he was the best there was and he has the notebook to prove it. Fish in the Bed. Raisins Everywhere. Lemonade Without Any Sugar.

Then he walks up on the first morning and finds the principal's car parked at the top of the front steps. Somebody here is very good.

The telling is the best of it. The narrator talks straight to your reader. Notice the scowl. Notice the way he keeps sighing. That's one hundred sighs today. When Principal Barkin has to work out how to get a car back down a flight of stairs, you get all forty of the things that happen next, numbered, in order, including the part where he rings the police to ask for a helicopter.

Barkin is a joy throughout. He wakes at 4.44 in the morning, makes up a song about school in the shower, and always wears red, because red is the colour that conveys absolute power. Presidents know it.

There's a bullying thread you should know about. Josh Barkin, the principal's son, decides Miles has embarrassed the family name and lists all the places he could beat him up where nobody would catch him. The sidewalk outside your house. Behind the garage. A field. It's played for laughs and Miles handles it by tipping his own lunch tray down his shirt, but a child being got at in real life might not find that page funny.

If your reader enjoys a story where the grown-ups are the ridiculous ones and the children are running rings round them, this is very much that.

What to read next

And if it goes down well there's a second one. The Terrible Two Get Worse brings in Principal Barkin's own no-nonsense father to run the school and set about destroying every last sign of fun.