WeirdBlog.com

Posts Tagged ‘United States’

Grade 2-3–This humorous story features a nontraditional but goodhearted principal who skateboards to school and constantly challenges students to strive for academic excellence. When second-grader A.J. gets sent to the office because he didn’t do his homework, Mr. Klutz gives him a candy bar as an incentive to try harder. Then the man proposes that if all students in the school complete one million math problems he will throw a chocolate party with all the treats they can eat. Other challenges follow, as Mr. Klutz promises to climb the flagpole if the kids complete Election Day essays, dress up in a turkey costume and ride a pogo stick down Main Street when they compile a list of 100,000 spelling words, etc. Although the children hold up their end of each bargain, they begin to worry about Mr. Klutz as his promises get weirder and weirder. Eventually, they tell him that they will stop learning unless he stops his crazy antics. Black-and-white cartoons add to the silliness, and the large print and simple vocabulary make this an easy chapter book that will satisfy newly confident as well as reluctant readers who ask for funny books.–Kristina Aaronson, Henniker Community School, NH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. –This text refers to the Library Binding edition.

” … an easy chapter book that will satisfy newly confident as well as reluctant readers who ask for funny books.” — School Library Journal

Will satisfy newly confident as well as reluctant readers who ask for funny books. — School Library Journal

New York is one of the world biggest metropolises. It is also one of the weirdest. That probably comes as no surprise to anybody. But wait until you get your hands on “Weird New York”, and read about Long Island’s Big Duck, Moan and Groan Road in, of all places, a town called Hope, and the Jell-O Museum in Le Roy. This is a great alternative travel guide to New York – both City and State – to find out what the other books won’t tell you, like what to do in Spook Rock Road, how to find the world’s largest pet cemetery, or what to do if you bump into the Lady of Lake Ronkonkoma. This is your chance to find out why New York is the city that never sleeps…

Ms. Hannah wears dresses made out of potholders and collects garbage instead of throwing it out. Plus she’s making A.J. be partners with smelly Andrea. This is the worst art class ever!

Ms. Hannah Is Bananas by Dan Gutman. This book is about AJ’s teacher Ms. Hannah. The characters are AJ, Ryan, Mrs. Hannah, Ms. Daisy, and Andrea. Mrs. Hannah does not have a garbage can, because she never wastes anything. She puts it in a ball. For instance, AJ’s friend, Ryan, blew his nose on a tissue and Ms Hannah took it and stuck it on a newspaper ball. It was nasty.

The book itself is beautiful–certainly coffee table caliber. The 263 colorful pages are divided into 11 sections: Local Legends and Lore, Ancient Mysteries, Fabled People and Places, Unexplained Phenomena, Local Heroes and Villains, Personalized Properties, Roadside Oddities, Roads Less Traveled, Quaker State Ghosts, Cemetery Safari and Abandoned Places. Each of the sections reveals the oddities, tall tales and myths of Pennsylvania through colorful pictures and testimonies from actual eyewitnesses and personal accounts from the editors who visited most of the included sites. Most of the entries are short snippets, making this a good breeze-through book for those not interested in heavy reading.

If this book does not urge people to gas up their wagons and plot out a Weird PA tour, I don’t now what will. In fact, maybe I should get licensing rights to the book and start my own tour group. Hmmm. Anyway, some great sites worth visiting (or steering clear of, take your pick) are Gravity Hill in Bedford County, where a car put in neutral will roll up instead of the obvious; New Hope and historic Philadelphia which are filled with ghost stories of famed Pennsylvanians; Pennhurst, an abandoned mental asylum in Philly and yes, there is even an empty morgue (or is it?); a backyard zoo in Fayette county filled with larger-than-life animal sculptures and in York County, there really is an old woman who lives in a shoe(-shaped house). Okay, former shoe salesman. I was way too tempted to use the nursery rhyme.

Two included places happen to be personal favorites: the burning-for-thirty years Columbia county ghost town, Centralia and Shartlesville’s Roadside America. The latter impressed the authors so much they called it, “The most pleasant surprise we found.” That makes me happy. This massive model train set spans a huge hangar and represents much of America through miniscule interpretations. A must see!

This is an excellent edition in the Weird series, mainly due to the author’s enthusiasm for the subject. He tackles a sprawling amount of New England history and folklore, and will definitely give you a ton of travel ideas for your next road trip.

Mr. Citro is to be commended on finding so many new curiosities (The Elusive Vermont Hum, The Girl Who Stopped Time) as well as uncovering long-lost tales rarely told (Hibernating Hill Folk, Gentlemen of the Highway). As always, Mr. Citro writes with his usual tounge-in-cheek, witty humor we have grown to love and expect from him. He doesn’t disappoint here.

You’ll see giant frogs atop spools of thread, hillside whale tails, and Boston’s skinniest house. Spend some time at America’s Stonehenge in Salem, New Hampshire (an enjoyable and educational place to spend an afternoon), and go see The Weird Windmill in Newport, Rhode Island (a fun and historic place to wander around for the day). There are colorful photos of these and more! This book is stuffed full of photos of almost every strange site, as well as illustrations for the legends.

Something weird is going on.

Miss Daisy, who teaches second grade, doesn’t know how to add or subtract. Not only that, she doesn’t know how to read or write either. She is the dumbest teacher in the history of the world!

Gr. 1-3. Second-grader A. J. hates school, but he has to admit that Miss Daisy isn’t like any teacher he has had before. She enjoys watching TV and eating chocolate just like A. J., and she is always asking her students for help solving problems in math and spelling. She also takes A. J.’s suggestion to turn the school into a video-game arcade seriously. Principal Klutz agrees to “rent out” the school for a night (and wear a gorilla suit) if the children read a million pages. Can they do it? The humorous, simply written story, first in the My Weird School series, gets its zest largely from A. J.’s lively, first-person commentary on school life and legend. Reluctant students will have no trouble relating to A. J., and breezy Miss Daisy illustrates how respecting kids and balancing learning with fun can produce positive results. The occasional cartoon line drawings are a good fit. Shelle Rosenfeld
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved –This text refers to the Library Binding edition.

Meth-heads, man-made monsters, and murderous Neo-Nazis. Blissed out club kids dying at the speed of sound. The un-dead and the very soon-to-be-dead. They’re all here, trying to claw their way free.

From the radioactive streets of a war-scarred America, where the nuclear bombs have become self-aware, to the fallow fields of Nebraska where the kids are mainlining lightning bugs, this is a world both alien and intensely human. This is a place where self-discovery involves scalpels and horse tranquilizers; where the doctors are more doped-up than the patients; where obsessive-compulsive acid-freaks have unlocked the gateway to God and can’t close the door.

This is not a safe place. You can turn back now, or you can head straight into the heart of . . .

The Angel Dust Apocalypse

The authors, junior high students and best friends David and Asa, along with best-selling author Marya Washington Tyler, took the kind of gooey, slimy, disgusting science facts that students love and turned them into hilarious math problems.

Your students will enjoy trying to determine what percent of the refrigerators in the U.S. contain moldy food.

When’s the last time you had your students figure the weight of cow manure produced in the U.S.?

How many 8-ounce coffee mugs will an average person’s sweat fill?

What is the number of saliva droplets expelled in one class period?

Your students won’t mind math when they get to figure the cost of a meal at the Aftermath Restaurant, with foods like Deep Fried Lint, Pseudo-Chicken Parts, Wax Fruit Bowl, and Hot Sludge Sundae. Even the answer key is hilarious.

These and other intriguing problems await your students in this book designed to teach children to translate statements and questions into mathematical equations. All of the problems are based on known scientific facts.