Publisher's Weekly Review
With a cast of characters who prefer tricks to treats, R.L. Stine kicks off the paper-over-board Rotten School series: #1 The Big Blueberry Barf-Off! and #2 The Great Smelling Bee, illus. by Trip Park (see Children's Audio below). Park's madcap cartoons of freckle-face, bespectacled narrator Bernie Bridges (aka "Big B") and his buds Belzer, Feenman and Crench combined with Stine's wacky dialogue result in a kind of Fat Albert dynamics that will make kids want to visit this boarding school again and again. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Bernie Bridges, the hero of Rotten School, is sneaky and manipulative; his only redeeming quality is that he's not spoiled like his archenemy, Sherman Oaks. Stine doesn't bother to make Bernie likable, just clever. Stine knows plot, and he takes every chance to deliver easy, bad jokes that will make readers laugh. Black-and-white pictures illustrate each chapter. Stickers are appended. [Review covers these Rotten School titles: The Big Blueberry Barf-off!, The Good, the Bad and the Very Slimy, and The Great Smelling Bee.] (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
