Review - Rotten School: The Big Blueberry-Barf-Off!

Pub. June 2015; Pages: 128

I'm sure we all have many books on our bookshelves that we would love to reread, but we just never have to time to get to them. Well, that's how I felt every time I glance at my bookshelves. For my New Year's Resolution, I've decided to attempt to reread those books, and to keep me on track, I've started a new weekly post called Thursday ReReads.

There are many titles that I wanted to reread, but after a long debate with myself, I decided to start with the Rotten School series. It's written by one of my favorite authors, R.L. Stine, and it lasted for 16 books.

The first book in the series is titled "The Big Blueberry Bark-off!" and was originally published in 2005 by Parachute Press. The book (and the entire series) is set at the private school called Rotten School, and centers on Bernie Bridge (Big B), a kid that has a million schemes up his sleeves throughout the school. He's kind of like the younger version of Saved by the Bell's Zack Morris.

Bernie lives in the Rotten House with his best friends Fennman & Crench, their dorm mother Mrs. Heinie and a few other students (Belzer, Beast, etc.). His newest scheme is selling T-shirts that are made out of rope to the third-graders.

His archenemy is Sherman Oaks, a rich kid that lives in the Nyce House. Sherman is always trying to showoff his wealth, which in this book, includes his new watch with a gold band (worth $500) that has forty-two different functions (plays DVDs, pops popcorn, etc.). Bernie want's to outshine Sherman, and impress his love, April-May-June, who doesn't actually have the same feelings for him, by being her dancing partner at upcoming dance class.

This is when Bernie comes up with the perfect plan - he needs to trick Sherman into giving him the watch and there is only one way to accomplish it - by having a pie eating contest!

With illustrations by Trip Park, Rotten School: The Big Blueberry-Barf-Off! is a crazy and fun children book (ages 8-12) that is clearly almost forgotten about. The characters are zany, the dialogue is comical and the plot is insane. If I remember correctly, I received the first two or three books in the series for Christmas from my mother in 2005 or 2006. She had remembered my love for Goosebumps and Fear Street during my childhood and thought I would like this one (even though I was in late 20s at the time). I enjoyed reading the book then and now at thirty-four-years-old, I loved re-reading it.