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First Grade Dropout

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First Grade Dropout

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Overview

The first grade narrator of this book has been lots of things: Hungry. Four years old. Crazy bored. Soaking wet. Pretty regular kid . . . until he makes a mistake so big that he’s sure he will never be able to go back to Lakeview Elementary School. All readers, even those not in first grade, will find the narrator’s feelings familiar, and discover that even though embarrassing things happen, they’re usually not as bad as they seem. And sometimes they’re even funny!

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About the Author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544129856
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	07/07/2015
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	1,131,365
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Audrey Vernick is author of several novels and many picture books, including Brothers at Bat: The True Story of an Amazing All-Brother Baseball Team. She lives with her family near the ocean in New Jersey. Visit her online at audreyvernick.com and on Twitter @yourbuffalo.

Matthew Cordell has illustrated many picture and chapter books for children including Wolf in the Snow, which won the Caldecott Medal. He lives with his wife and their two children outside of Chicago, Illinois. Visit him online at matthewcordell.com and on Twitter @cordellmatthew.

From the B&N Reads Blog

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Editorial Reviews

★ 04/20/2015
After Vernick’s young narrator accidentally calls his teacher “Mommy,” he believes that the only reasonable response to this humiliation (after casting aside ideas that involve magic and time machines) is to drop out of Lakeview Elementary School. (The boy takes little comfort when his teacher says, “Don’t worry. It happens every year,” all too aware that everyone—even his best friend—laughed at him.) Vernick’s tousled-haired hero may feel miserable, but he has the self-awareness, timing, and raconteurship of a master monologist; readers will be won over from his intriguing opening line (“I’ve been lots of things”) and quickly assured that this, too, shall pass. So effective is Vernick (Bogart and Vinnie) in conjuring the boy’s blush-inducing, sweat-triggering embarrassment, readers young and old will probably find themselves flashing back to their own not-quite-forgotten moments of humiliation. Likewise, Cordell’s (Special Delivery) sketchlike illustrations, composed of frenetic ink lines and punctuated with washes of bright color, are almost Feifferesque in their sense of emotional spontaneity and comic angst. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Erin Murphy, Erin Murphy Literary Agency. Illustrator’s agent: Rosemary Stimola, Stimola Literary Studio. (July)

Publishers Weekly

2015-05-12
In typical child fashion, an embarrassing slip of the tongue leads one young blond boy to want to drop out of school altogether. Mortified by what he said but even more so by the fact that his best friend, African-American Tyler, led the laughter that followed it, the unnamed narrator imagines what he might do now: he could cast a spell to unsay what he said or invent a time machine or pretend to be a new kid in school. Or perhaps he'll just stay home and work on his jump shot until he's a teenager and then get a job, but he sure will miss his friends and all the things they do together. But when he passes Tyler at the soccer field, his friend acts like nothing happened. Not only that, he makes a slip of his own, and just like that, the boy is a dropout no longer. Throughout, Vernick plays with the ideas of mockery and embarrassment—the boy himself laughed at something that happened to Tyler last year, and though he swore he wouldn't laugh at his friends ever again, he does. Tyler defuses the situation by laughing at himself, and that makes all the difference. Cordell's ink-and-watercolor illustrations masterfully portray the first-person narrator's every emotion: chagrin, nervousness, embarrassment, sadness, anger. A sure conversation-starter about empathy. (Picture book. 5-9)

Kirkus Reviews

* "Vernick’s tousled-haired hero may feel miserable, but he has the self-awareness, timing, and raconteurship of a master monologist; readers will be won over from his intriguing opening line (“I’ve been lots of things”) and quickly assured that this, too, shall pass." —Publishers Weekly, starred review "Cordell's ink-and-watercolor illustrations masterfully portray the first-person narrator's every emotion: chagrin, nervousness, embarrassment, sadness, anger. A sure conversation-starter about empathy." —Kirkus "With cartoonish, frenetic lines and messy blobs of color, the childish feel of Cordell's illustrations make Vernick's message clear: school life and friendship can be confusing...Many readers will recognize themselves in these pages." —Booklist "Vernick's tightly wound age-appropriately self-absorbed narrator is hugely relatable, but readers will also get that he's overdoing it...a riot as well as an analgesic." —Horn Book Magazine "This winning picture book will be popular for its entertainment value, as well as for its potential to introduce ideas about empathy." —School Library Journal "The amusingly brassy and exaggerated text is clever, deploying hyperbole to make a genuinely humiliating situation into something kids can chuckle at with sympathy." —Bulletin —

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