My Weird School Special: Hip, Hip, Hooray! Every Day Is a Holiday!

My Weird School Special #11

by Dan Gutman, Jim Paillot (illustrator)

With more than 35 million books sold, the My Weird School series really gets kids reading! The students of Ella Mentry School must figure out how to celebrate some weird-but-real holidays in this My Weird School Special from New York Times bestselling author Dan Gutman and veteran illustrator Jim Paillot.

Winter break is over, and it’s another five months until summer vacation. A.J. and his friends aren’t looking forward to school starting back up, but they’re even less excited when Dr. Carbles, president of the Board of Education, cancels ALL school holidays. No Presidents' Day, no Memorial Day, and forget about any snow days!

Morale is down, but Mrs. Roopy, the librarian, has a trick up her sleeve. Instead of celebrating traditional holidays, the school will celebrate real holidays that no one has ever heard of! Will the kids be able to save the year with their fun festivities, or will Dr. Carbles’s antiholiday agenda win out?

Dan Gutman’s signature kid-friendly sense of humor and Jim Paillot’s fun illustrations are perfectly blended in this weird holiday special you won’t want to miss—featuring bonus wacky holidays, games, puzzles, and more!

Genres: Childrens

141 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 12, 2024

About the author

The author of over 80 books in a little over a decade of writing, Dan Gutman has written on topics from computers to baseball. Beginning his freelance career as a nonfiction author dealing mostly with sports for adults and young readers, Gutman has concentrated on juvenile fiction since 1995. His most popular titles include the time-travel sports book Honus and Me and its sequels, and a clutch of baseball books, including The Green Monster from Left Field. From hopeful and very youthful presidential candidates to stunt men, nothing is off limits in Gutman's fertile imagination. As he noted on his author Web site, since writing his first novel, They Came from Centerfield, in 1994, he has been hooked on fiction. "It was fun to write, kids loved it, and I discovered how incredibly rewarding it is to take a blank page and turn it into a WORLD."

Gutman was born in New York City in 1955, but moved to Newark, New Jersey the following year and spent his youth there.

Reviews

[Javierthearcnovice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another bedtime book that my children love. One of my daughters said that it was “sigma slay.” Ha! I have no idea what that means but she said that it’s a good thing.

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

👍🏻🫶🏻🙀❤️

So funny.It brightened my day so much❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️I LOVE this book so much😻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀😻😻😻😻😻😻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻😻😻👍🏻😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE this book

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Cables, the president of the Board of Education, cancels all holidays at Ella Mentry as part of his evil plan, but A.J.and his classmates discover that every day is a holiday and learn about them thanks to Mrs. Roopy, the school librarian.

[B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is so much fun! Every day really is a holiday! Learning about holidays, how they came about, and celebrating them is a party in itself!

[amyj91.reads]

Read the book for my nephew he wanted to see how fast i could read one of his books. Only took me 23 minutes now he is reading the book.

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love it!!! I even keep track of the holidays!!! and I love my weird school special !!!

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Won a finished paperback copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway!

I really enjoyed this quick read for multiple reasons: the humor is spot on for a kid, and I as an adult laughed several times out loud as well; the book reads like it's written from the POV of a young boy, as not only is the language accessible and in keeping with the vocab, etc., of a kid, but the inclusion of footnotes after conducting research at the library is so accurate (kids always start doing the things they just learned about!); and the illustrations are fun and support the text, even if I wish they were actually in color instead of black and white. I also noticed that the book has ink marks throughout from what looks like a poor printing job, but I'm hoping that's not widespread; I didn't receive an ARC, otherwise I would have attributed it to that. A few of the holidays and what everyone does to celebrate them seem a tad unrealistic (e.g., running around the playground in their underwear and throwing pumpkins off the roof), but the whole of the story is good fun.

Overall, I think most people would appreciate this book! I'd love to check out more of this series and writer and I'm guessing his other books likely have this impact. Seems like the kind of author who understands kids and what they want and I could see kids reading more of these books once they read one because by then they'd be hooked!