First Grade Dropout by Audrey Vernick (review)

“There is no way I can go back to Lakeview Elementary School tomorrow,” says our narrator. That’s because he did something stupid today, something that made his best friend, Tyler, laugh; something that made the whole class laugh. It’s the classic first-grade mistake: “I. Called. My. Teacher. MOMMY!!!” When he encounters Tyler at the soccer field, Tyler not only doesn’t snicker but is delighted to drop out too; his promise that the two can work on their “junk shots” (Tyler’s malapropism of “jump shots”) is an ice-breaking goof, and the pair guffaw together over their blunders. The amusingly brassy and exaggerated text is clever, deploying hyperbole to make a genuinely humiliating situation into something kids can chuckle at with sympathy. It also places the narrator’s experience of being laughed at in a larger context where everybody’s been the laugher as well as the laughee, both of which are common occurrences at the age where kids are excited about mastery but frequently miss the mark. Cordell’s line and watercolor illustrations have a rakish and Quentin Blake-ish charm; the protagonist is a humbled young sophisticate rather than a little kid, and the visual interpretations, such as the marching band full of musicians loudly guffawing at his gaffe, will ring emotionally true to youngsters who’ve experienced similar embarrassments. There’s obvious use potential as well as pleasure in this title that humorously teaches a crucial lesson: mistakes happen to everybody, and we survive.