Review - Rotten School: Dumb Clucks

HarperCollins; 128 pages; Amazon

It seems that my last few Thursday Rereads weren't actually written & posted on Thursday, so I thought I would make sure to read this week's title this morning and have the review posted today!

Yep, today's reread marks the 16th and final installment in the Rotten School series by bestselling author R.L. Stine, titled "Dumb Clucks."

If you're not already familiar with the series, I'll give you a brief (and final) catch up. The Rotten School books are set at a boarding school called Rotten School, and centers on 4th-grader Bernie Bridges, who has a bad habit of scheme his classmates out of money.

"Dumb Clucks" kicks off with Bernie trying to sell his friends t-shirts of the popular cartoon Tweenage Mutant Ninja Tadpoles, but he is shocked to learn that they no longer like the cartoon. What do they now like? Well, they like a new series called Stupid Chicken. Desperate to get rid of his t-shirts, Bernie attempts to sell them to the first-graders, but sadly the first-graders are fans of Stupid Chicken too.

To make matters worse, Parent's Day is just around the corner, and Headmaster Upchuck gives Bernie the responsibility of making sure that the campus is quite until Parent's Day, which isn't an easy task to do with all the Stupid Chicken craziness. And if anything goes wrong, Bernie has to pack his bags and leave Rotten School ...forever!

Final Thoughts: Similar to the previous entry, "Dumb Clucks" doesn't feel like the typical Rotten School book; though this is a good thing as the series is starting to feel a bit cliched. Here, Mr. Stine pokes fun at how children can be get wrapped up in a new cartoon series quickly. Actually, the Rotten School kids get addicted to two different cartoon characters throughout the book. Overall, while Rotten School: Dumb Clucks isn't the best in the series, it's still a decent way to end the series.