Simon Sidebottom 2: Too cool for school by P. Crumble and Dean Rankine
Koala Books, 2018. ISBN 9781743810392.
Simon Sidebottom doesn't have time to be an endearing fleshed out
character. His goal is to say and do ridiculous things and have
ridiculous things said and done to him - over and over. Being forced
to clean up his sibling's projectile vomit doesn't sound like a
particularly nice or realistic home life, but a school full of
repellent staff and students isn't that nice either. Perhaps Simon
too, is a revolting boy? Perhaps this is the typical fate of the
comic novel anti-hero?
At the beginning of term, Simon falls asleep while his new teacher
(Ms Graff aka Ms Giraffe) and the Principal (Mr Smart-Felling aka Mr
Fart-Smelling) are team teaching. Waking abruptly, he disrupts the
class meeting and as punishment he is made to play the part of the
school mascot (a ferret) for the entire year. His reluctance to
comply leads him to be in the wrong places at the wrong times,
usually flashing his underpants, and, where he will no doubt
continue to say, do or experience incredulously stupid things. These
include: retrieving the school ferret from the sewers where it has
fled, or jumping inside Prof Nutbeam's time machine, or listening to
Mr Spitnpolish's confession that he is actually Simon's future self!
The book is not a linear narrative but of the
Pick-a-path / Choose-your-own-adventure genre. Setting a hectic pace,
middle schoolers will appreciate the toilet humour. There's plenty
to choose from - farts, stinky sewers, ratty toenails, swollen bums,
plagues of cockroaches, snot, vomit, underpants, trousers full of
ferrets, boogers, hairy legs, girl germs, dog poo, ferret poo,
toilets, Principals with rubbery arms, etc. After each active event,
(there are no stative events) the reader is confronted by the
phrase, "Then a funny thing happened..." followed by a choice of
prompts with page numbers. Readers choose exactly what further
nonsense Simon may navigate. After many ridiculous events, readers
develop a strong urge to choose a path that leads to one or more of
the proffered endings and the relief of reading, "The End".
If you like frenetic, totally gross, non-stop action, then you will
thoroughly enjoy the empowering to-ing and fro-ing, retracing your
steps so that you miss none of the gross bits on your journey to
each potential solution.
Deb Robins