Kids who love James Patterson and Chris Tebbett’s Middle School series, as well as those who love the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, will go nuts for Patterson’s latest, I Funny: A Middle School Story, which this time has him partnered with Chris Grabenstein. Middle School series illustrator, Laura Park is also back filling the pages of I Funny with a minimum of three energetic, detailed cartoons per chapter. It’s a combination, along with Patterson’s trademark short chapters and snappy pacing, that will rocket this book to the top of plenty of reluctant readers’ favorite lists.
Middle schooler Jamie Grimm has a mission – he will be the best stand-up comedian ever, even if he can’t actually stand up. Sure, he’s in a wheel chair, he’s new in town, and he lives with his aunt & uncle and their son Stevie, who bullies Jamie in spite of (or maybe because of) his disability, but as far as Jamie sees it, that’s all fodder for his act. He’s spent countless hours studying the best of comedy’s best, and he practices his jokes on friends, strangers, and the customers at his other uncle’s seaside diner. But when he decides to take the chance and enter The Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic national competition, doubt sets in. Will he choke in front of a live audience? Will the judges go easy on him out of pity? And will the secrets and feelings Jamie covers up with humor come out and expose things about his past that he’d rather not face?
I Funny is a chatty, engaging, and (do I need to say it?) funny, look at a kid who’s been through Hell and come back again, having used the power of humor and hope in equal measure to survive.
- Posted by Cori