Worst Week Ever! Monday

Amores, Eva and Cosgrove, Matt. Worst Week Ever! Monday
January 5, 2023 by Simon & Schuster Ltd.

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Justin Chase is having a very busy morning. His mother has just gotten married (to a man Justin suspects is a vampire!), and the next morning at 5:00 a.m., she is waking him up to go live with his father. Since she's a nurse and has to work nights, and his father has just bought a big house where he lives with Justin's Nan, it seems like a good idea. It does mean starting a new school, and when Justin gets to his dad's house and starts getting ready, the disasters start to pile up. His father has decorated the room with his favorite television character... when he was five! His school uniform is also very small, and since he lacks a bathing suit for swim class, his Nan crochets him one. His father, who is a plumber, insists on driving him to school in his truck, which looks like a giant toilet. He meets helpful and friendly neighbor Mia, but also the stuck up and snarky Marvin King, who is assigned to guide him around. Justin shares a name with a popular film star, and since his father has put name tags on all his clothes, this causes him some consternation, but the worst part of the day is the extreme intestinal distress that a breakfast of green smoothie and wedding cake frosting have inflicted upon him. He has quite a bout in the bathroom, only to find there is no toilet paper. He substitutes his crocheted socks. When swim class approaches, he hopes to redeem himself, but gets stuck on the high dive, has his swim suit start to unravel, AND has a horrible Code Brown in the pool. Things just go from bad to worse, and this is only the FIRST day of his week. More adventures promise to come. 

Strengths: This is a pell mell adventure in every day life. I loved that Justin got dropped off an dhad to go right to school. His Nan and dad are nicely quirky without being over the top (well, okay, maybe the toilet truck is), and even though Justin has a horrible day, he stays in decent spirits. While there are uniforms, and Nan drinks a lot of tea, it's not overly British, not that I mind multiple mentions of biscuits at all. The illustrations are quite nice, and the text is fairly minimal. It will be easy to sell this to childre intent on rereading Wimpy Kid for the hundreth time. I am interested to see the direction that subsequent books take, and look forward especially to seeing how the relationships with  Mia and Marvin play out. 
Weaknesses: Too many poop and fart jokes. Way, way too many. Not nuanced at all. And yes, it is possible to have nuanced fart jokes. This was a bit much for adult sensibilities, but tweens have a different threshhold. 
What I really think: Like Pichon's Tom Gates, Clover's Rory Branagan, and Berger's The Pudding Problem, this is a quirky, British version of Wimpy Kid that I like a WHOLE lot more. (Come on. Greg Hefley is NOT nice.) If this series becomes available in a prebind, I will definitely purchase it. Tom Gates has been super popular in my library; I wish all of the UK titles were available in the US.