Lunch Lady
and the Field Trip Fiasco
Jarrett J. Krosoczka
Jarrett J. Krosoczka has authored twenty one published books—ten picture books, ten graphic novels and his new chapter book—Platypus Police Squad: The Frog Who Croaked.
His Lunch Lady series has twice won a Children's Choice Book Award, in
the Third to Fourth Grade Book of the Year category, and was nominated
for a Will Eisner Comic Industry Award. Lunch Lady and the Field Trip Fiasco is a hilarious story about the Breakfast Bunch and the Lunch Lady going on a class field trip to a museum. When the gang finds out some of the artwork is fake, they must stop the criminals while still making it back in time for the end of the museum tour.
The Lunch Lady series is a graphic novel series which are "new kinds of 'handheld books' with graphic and nonlinear formats that today's young people find especially appealing.. there is a fun connection here between fantasy fiction and graphic interpretation" (Vardell pg. 228). Krosoczka's book is definitely entertaining. Humor can be found in both the text and in the illustrations. For example, the Lunch Lady has an array of tools she uses like a Spork Phone, GPS gum & Gum-Wrapper GPS Tracker, Whisk Whackers, a Ziti Microscope and a Spatu-copter.
One evaluation criteria is that "it should be possible to identify with the main characters.. they may be strange or extraordinary, but we should still feel a kinship with the protagonist" (Vardell, pg. 218). Krosoczka has done a great job of this. Even though the Breakfast Bunch fights bad guys with the help of Lunch Lady, they are still normal and relatable kids. They get picked on while riding the school bus, they accidently knock over a museum exhibit and they forget to have their parent sign a permission slip.
Krosoczka, J. J. Lunch Lady and the Field Trip Fiasco. New York: Knopf, 2011.
ISBN 978-0-375-86730-9
$6.99 at Barnes & Noble
Work consulted: Vardell, Sylvia M. Children's Literature in Action: A Librarian's Guide. Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited, 2008.
Author bio and picture from http://www.studiojjk.com/biography2.html
No comments:
Post a Comment