Review - Rotten School: The Great Smelling Bee - Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer

ISBN: 978-0060785918; Pages: 128

As promised in my first Thursday ReReads post, I'm featuring Rotten School: The Great Smelling Bee by R.L. Stine this week. It's the second installment in the children book series that was published by Parachute Press in 2005. I grew up reading Mr. Stine's Goosebumps and Fear Street series. If I remember correctly, I received the first two or three books in this series as a Christmas present in 2005 (or 2006).

The Great Smelling Bee continues the misadventures of Bernie Bridges, who's basically the craziest kid at the private school called Rotten School. He lives in the third floor of the Rotten House with his very own room. His best buddies Feenman and Crench live in the same house as well as Belzer, a kid with a very big nose that will do anything Bernie tells him to do.

Out of nowhere, Bernie receives a huge crate from his parents. Could it be a computer, a TV or even a car? No not even close. Actually, inside the crate is his Bernie's pets, his rude parrot Lippy and his very smelly dog Gassy. And I really mean smelly; the dog literally clears out the room as nobody can stand his smell.

It seems Bernie's parents are going on a trip for awhile and can't take care of his pets anymore, so Lippy and Gassy are now his responsibility. However, there's a slight problem - no pets are allowed in Rotten School!

The only way to outsmart his nemesis (Sherman Oaks), his dorm mother (Mrs. Heinie) and Headmaster Upchuck (who hates Bernie), is to slip his extra Rotten School outfit onto Gassy and try to convince everyone that his dog is an exchanged student. What could go wrong?

Final Thoughts: The Rotten School series is a slapstick comedy, which every installment starts out with a hilarious "Morning Announcement" from Headmaster Upchuck, who had accidentally put "Smelling Bee" on the "Spelling Bee" posters, leaving all the students confused. While The Great Smelling Bee isn't the best in the series, there are still many laugh out loud moments to entertain both kids and adults.