With my son being on the autism spectrum, it meant that some things took longer than others.  It also meant that there were times when it was harder to spark his interest.  One of these times had to do with moving him up to chapter books with reading.  He was quite comfortable with Dr. Seuss-style books.  I tried many different chapter books for young readers before his interest was really sparked.

One of the series I stumbled across during this quest were the My Weird School books. The titles were interesting and they looked like a lot of fun.  These weren’t books my son took to right away.  However, I had purchased a few of the series as they are fairly inexpensive at just $3.99 each and he came back to them when he started really enjoying reading chapter books.  Now it seems like he can’t get enough of this series.

The first book in the series is titled Miss Daisy is Crazy!  This introduces the series and the characters.  A.J. is a second-grader who hates school.  He wants to be a football player and doesn’t understand why he has to go to school since his father says all football players are dumb anyway.  On the first day of second grade, he tells his teacher Miss Daisy that he hates school.  She responds that she does too.  A.J. is shocked.  Miss Daisy tells him that if it weren’t for school, she could be home eating bonbons and watching television.  A.J. begins to think that a teacher who would rather be home watching television than in school might not be so bad.

Through the course of Miss Daisy is Crazy!, it becomes apparent that Miss Daisy is not your typical teacher.  She approaches her students differently and gets them to learn without them realizing what they are doing.  She pretends to not know how to read so the students will help her.  She pretends not to understand math and even brings in a box of bon-bons for the children to use to help her.

It’s not just Miss Daisy who is a bit creative with getting children to learn, but the principal, Mr. Klutz as well.  When A.J. and his friends come up with the idea to buy the school and turn it into a video arcade, Mr. Klutz agrees to let them rent the school for a night and turn it into a video arcade if all the students read a million pages.  Not only that, but he will dress up in a gorilla suit for the night.  This gets the whole school involved in reading.

While reading Miss Daisy is Crazy!, I could see that it doesn’t give a lot away.  The narrative is done from A.J.’s point of view and although it seems he and his fellow students don’t catch on to Miss Daisy’s creative teaching style, there’s enough information for adults and some savvy readers to get what’s going on.

There are illustrations throughout the book that really give a boost to the imagination.  These are basic black-and-white sketches that have more of a cartoonish quality to them but are a lot of fun.  In the front of the book are sketches of the four students who make up the majority of the non-adult characters in the book.  In addition to A.J., I would say Andrea gets the most attention since she seems to be the smartest kid in the class and not afraid to show it.  At the same time, she doesn’t seem to understand how Miss Daisy is getting them to learn.

Miss Daisy is Crazy! Comes in at 84 pages and is divided nicely into chapters for easy reading.  There was little here that I thought would present difficulty to a child who was ready to move into more advanced reading.  I can’t say it’s a book I could really read out loud to a child like other beginning chapter books I’ve come across.  Still, it’s a lot of fun and put a smile on my face as I read it.  In some ways, it’s putting school in the perspective of a typical second-grader although at times A.J. seems to be not your average second-grader.

I really enjoyed Miss Daisy is Crazy! and think it was a fun way to encourage reading.  It wasn’t a book my son took to right away, but was sitting in our home library and he picked it up one day when he wanted something different.  Now he wants more of the books in this series.  I think it’s a fun read for children at this level as the subject matter isn’t too serious nor too frivolous.  When your child is ready for this book will depend on their reading abilities, but for most, I would say at the earliest in first grade, and by the end of fourth grade they will likely be beyond it unless they have special needs.  I think the price is right to have it around for that time when children are ready for chapter books as it’s fun enough to really encourage children to move up to chapter books.