The Unlucky Lottery Winners of Classroom 13Honest Lee & Matthew J. Gilbert
Little Brown, 2017 119 pages
Grades 3-5
Humor
Classroom 13 series book 1
Ms. Linda is a very unlucky person who is late to school most days for one reason or another. On the particular day in question Ms. Linda must buy a lottery ticket in order to use the phone at a convenience store after her car breaks down. After relaying the tale to her students she agrees to split the winnings with them should the odds be in her favor. To everyone's surprise Ms. Linda goes from the unluckiest person in the world to the luckiest when she wins the lottery for 28 billion dollars. She honors her agreement with the class and splits the take evenly. The rest of the book is broken into chapters headed by different student names relating what they did with their billion dollars. In most cases the parents aren't involved as the students spend their billion dollars on crazy things such as being cheated into buying a cow (in a reversal Jack in the Beanstalk nod) to purchasing the Eiffel tower. Some use their money for environmental causes and scientific discoveries, but with the exception of two students, all of the money gets frittered away with nothing to show for it, including Ms. Linda's. The book ends with an acknowledgement that a lot of money had been lost through this lottery fiasco with no one's life particularly improving. Lee manages to slip in life-lessons that he claims the students in classroom 13 did not really learn, including the teacher, and asks the reader if they learned anything. A final page challenges readers to write their own story about what they would do with the money in a similar situation, making this a great choice for classroom use.
Fans of the Wayside School series will be the natural audience for this similar series with a twist. The twist is certainly the lottery win and allows the author a ready-made format for his plot as we explore the individual experiences of the students. Lessons are imparted about all kinds of things, yet the book never gets preachy. It stays hilarious throughout and contains some truly clever bits, yet also contains a fair amount of potty humor, which the target audience will appreciate. As unlikely as the overall scenario is and as far-fetched as each child's choice tends to be, readers will love this book and it will spark their imaginations. Lee/Gilbert even dares to break the fourth wall as he gets into a debate with a particularly argumentative students. The students themselves are a refreshingly diverse lot. Racial and religious diversity is represented, as well as including a student in a wheelchair and one who wears hearing aids. The author includes two Indian students, instead of going for just one to represent the culture. My favorite stories were the one about Emma who spends her money on cats (my daughter Emma would also spend her winnings on cats) and the boy who clones himself so he can be in various places at once (this is what I would do with my fortune), and another boy who after buying a television family gets disgusted, sells his TV, and gets a free library card. One story reveals what the character did with her money only in code, which adds another dimension to the storytelling and helps to promote thinking and another tale is told entirely in French. A second series entry concerning magic wishes was released in September and the third, which explores fame, is set for release next week.
Fans of the Wayside School series will be the natural audience for this similar series with a twist. The twist is certainly the lottery win and allows the author a ready-made format for his plot as we explore the individual experiences of the students. Lessons are imparted about all kinds of things, yet the book never gets preachy. It stays hilarious throughout and contains some truly clever bits, yet also contains a fair amount of potty humor, which the target audience will appreciate. As unlikely as the overall scenario is and as far-fetched as each child's choice tends to be, readers will love this book and it will spark their imaginations. Lee/Gilbert even dares to break the fourth wall as he gets into a debate with a particularly argumentative students. The students themselves are a refreshingly diverse lot. Racial and religious diversity is represented, as well as including a student in a wheelchair and one who wears hearing aids. The author includes two Indian students, instead of going for just one to represent the culture. My favorite stories were the one about Emma who spends her money on cats (my daughter Emma would also spend her winnings on cats) and the boy who clones himself so he can be in various places at once (this is what I would do with my fortune), and another boy who after buying a television family gets disgusted, sells his TV, and gets a free library card. One story reveals what the character did with her money only in code, which adds another dimension to the storytelling and helps to promote thinking and another tale is told entirely in French. A second series entry concerning magic wishes was released in September and the third, which explores fame, is set for release next week.
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