Math Rashes

This collection of nine short stories presents episodes of education gone awry.

The intrigue continues at W. T. Melon Elementary School, when the school hallway portrait of W. T. Melon casts a spell on Motormouth Morgan and Richard the Bully. Strange goings-on follow in comic tales where classrooms are haunted and lunch boxes and pencil sharpeners magically come to life.

Children's Literature

The third graders at the W. T. Melon Elementary School inhabit a very real world, one that children will recognize, peopled with kids facing all sorts of problems in imaginative ways. For example, there's the class chatterbox, the committed doodler, the playground bully, and the girl who always loses her pencils. They meet up with magical events that help them work out their situations. The girl who always loses her pencil meets up with an enchanted pencil that sharpens any pencil it finds to smithereens. The student who draws creatures all over his papers finds his drawings coming to life one day, doing his work. This is great, but then they start making new doodle creatures on their own and taking over. Only by erasing them one by one can he stop them. The class bully gets his due one day when all the playground equipment comes to life to teach him a lesson he will never forget. This is one sweet, funny, and accessible book. Kids will laugh every time the tall teacher's ears turn red when he gets mad, and take comfort in the fact that they are not alone. 2000, Front Street, $14.95. Ages 7 to 10. Reviewer: Nancy Partridge

Douglas Evans is the author of MVP*, Apple Island, and the previous collections of classroom tales: Math Rashes and The Classroom at the End of the Hall. He has a master's degree in education and has taught for fifteen years in settings ranging from a small logging town in Oregon to international schools in Helsinki and London. He currently lives in Berkeley, California.

Larry Di Fiori has illustrated over sixty books for children, including the books of classroom stories by Douglas Evans, and has created pictures for Parents, Sesame Street, and Scholastic magazines. He lives in New Canaan, Connecticut.