11 Funny School Books That Make Class a Lot More Interesting

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Jungle Jimmy the Book Explorer, smiling in his brown safari hat and glasses. Readit the Book Worm, a green bookworm puppet with big round glasses and an open smile.

Book Reviews By The Book Explorer Jimmy Vee
and his bookworm buddy, Readit

School is a strange place when you think about it.

You put twenty-something children in one room. You hand them pencils. You explain that there are rules.

Then somebody brings out the glue.

Quite a lot can happen, according to children's books. Classmates get eaten. Crayons go on strike. A boy belly-flops into a glue lake. A pigeon files a formal objection to attending at all.

I've spent thirty years performing for kids, and school stories have one enormous advantage when you're trying to get a room interested.

Everybody already knows the territory.

The kid who talks too much. The teacher look. The unfair thing. The first day. The project that goes wrong. The moment you realize everyone is watching you.

You don't have to explain why any of that matters. They know.

So here's the rule I used building this list: school couldn't just be where the story happened. School had to make the story funny. A book that's merely useful in a classroom didn't qualify.

Eleven made it, plus one of mine at the bottom that I'm labeling clearly rather than sneaking into the ranking.

1. We Don't Eat Our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins

Best overall. Penelope Rex is nervous about her first day. Will the other kids like her? Will she make friends?

Are they delicious?

Unfortunately, yes. So she eats them, and her teacher makes her spit them out, and now nobody will play with her, which she finds baffling.

Take Penelope out of a classroom and half this book disappears. The nerves, the teacher, the classmates, the class goldfish who eventually teaches her about empathy by biting her finger. It's all school.

One warning from my full review: this plays completely differently at four than at six. Younger kids take it seriously. Older ones are in on the joke.

Best for: Ages 5 to 8, first-day nerves, dinosaur kids.

2. The Pigeon HAS to Go to School! by Mo Willems

Best first-day book. The Pigeon does not need school. He already knows everything. Apparently.

But what if he doesn't like it? What if the teacher doesn't like him? What if he learns too much?

These are reasonable concerns if you happen to be an extremely dramatic bird.

What makes it the right pick before a first day is that it never pretends the nervousness isn't there. Pigeon does the worrying for everybody, at volume, and the child gets to be the calm one for once.

Best for: Ages 3 to 6, and any grown-up prepared to argue with a pigeon.

3. Too Much Glue by Jason Lefebvre, illustrated by Zac Retz

Best art-room disaster. Matty's teacher says too much glue never dries. Matty considers this information carefully and then belly-flops into a lake of it.

Now he's stuck to the table, and every rescue his classmates attempt permanently attaches something else to him.

This one qualifies easily. Without the art class, the teacher's warning and the classmates mounting a rescue, there's no story at all.

Read it as a comedy, not a model. A teacher in the reviews put it best: kids will love it, just make clear you aren't endorsing the behavior.

Best for: Ages 4 to 8, art rooms, and teachers brave enough to read it within sight of actual glue.

4. The Cookie Fiasco by Dan Santat

Best sneaky math. Four friends. Three cookies. Nobody has explained how this is supposed to work.

While everyone panics, a nervous Hippo keeps breaking cookies into smaller pieces. And smaller pieces. And...

Oh.

A credit worth getting right: this one is Dan Santat's. Mo Willems created the Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! series it belongs to, and databases often blur the two, but the book is Santat's.

It's the one exception on this list. It isn't set at school, but at 319 words with a fairness argument and accidental fractions, it's too useful to a classroom and too funny to leave out.

Best for: Ages 5 to 8, beginning readers, and any room where fractions could use snacks.

5. We Will Rock Our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins

Best talent show. Penelope's back, and the problem has changed. Everybody sees dinosaur. She'd like them to notice she plays guitar.

Then somebody asks whether a T. rex should really be onstage doing that, and her confidence drops through the floor.

This is the school-label book. The sporty kid. The smart kid. The weird kid. The dinosaur. Penelope wants more than one box, and school is exactly where kids get put in them.

Best for: Ages 4 to 8, talent-show nerves, and the kid who's been assigned an identity.

6. David Goes to School by David Shannon

Best rule-breaker. David talks when he shouldn't. Runs where he shouldn't. Chews gum. Needs reminders. Many reminders.

What makes it work is that these aren't mysterious storybook offenses. Sit down. Wait your turn. Don't run. Every single one is a rule a real classroom actually has, and there's David demonstrating exactly why somebody had to invent it.

It gives you the whole start-of-year conversation without anybody photocopying the behavior handbook.

If your kid takes to him, No, David! is the original and it's almost wordless.

Best for: Ages 3 to 7, kindergarten and first grade, high-energy kids.

7. School's First Day of School by Adam Rex, illustrated by Christian Robinson

Best twist on the whole genre. Usually the kid is nervous about school.

Adam Rex asks the better question: what if the school is nervous about the kids?

Frederick Douglass Elementary is brand new. It doesn't know what children do. Will they like it? Why is that one saying he hates school?

It picked up seven starred reviews, and it deserved them. A nervous child reading this gets to look at the building and think, hang on, maybe we're both new at this.

That's funny and kind at the same time, and those two can share a desk.

Best for: Ages 4 to 8, new schools, first-day jitters.

8. The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt, illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

Best supply revolt. Duncan opens his crayon box and finds letters. The crayons have quit, and they have grievances.

Blue is exhausted. Black is tired of only doing outlines. Orange and Yellow aren't speaking over a dispute about the sun. Duncan has somehow become middle management.

It's on the list because school supplies are the entire cast, and because the joke underneath is one every classroom understands: everybody thinks their job is the unfair one.

Even the crayons.

Best for: Ages 4 to 8, art class, and grown-ups who appreciate a well-written complaint.

9. The Smart Cookie by Jory John, illustrated by Pete Oswald

Best for the kid who doesn't feel smart. She's smart now. She didn't always feel that way, and that's the part worth reading.

School turns "smart" into a ranking faster than almost anything else in a child's life, usually before a kid has worked out all the things they're actually good at.

It's gentler than Penelope or David. That's deliberate. This is the one I'd choose when a kid needs reassurance more than chaos.

Best for: Ages 4 to 8, kids measuring themselves against classmates.

10. The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School by Laura Murray, illustrated by Mike Lowery

Best chase. The class makes a gingerbread man. Then the class goes to recess.

The gingerbread man has one urgent question: where did everybody go?

Laura Murray flips the old story. Instead of children chasing him, he's chasing them, which turns the book into a tour of the entire school. Hallways, offices, the gym, the nurse.

That makes it unusually good early in the year, when half the job is teaching kids where everything is.

Best for: Ages 4 to 8, school tours, fractured fairy tales.

11. Miss Nelson Is Missing! by Harry Allard, illustrated by James Marshall

Best teacher revenge fantasy. Room 207 is behaving badly. Miss Nelson is sweet about it. Too sweet.

Then she vanishes, and in comes Miss Viola Swamp.

Oh no.

The class develops a rapid and detailed appreciation for what they had. It's from 1977 and it still works, because the bargain at the center of it is instantly legible to any child: we didn't value the nice teacher, and now look.

James Marshall draws Miss Viola Swamp like somebody about to announce a surprise quiz.

Best for: Ages 4 to 8, misbehaving classrooms, and a little mystery with the comedy.

And One of Mine, Clearly Labeled

I wrote this one, so it isn't in the ranking. Eleven books above were chosen on the merits. This is a bonus, and you should weigh it accordingly.

Petey Perfectpants and the Silly Sock Puppet Problem is for the kid at the other end of the classroom from David Shannon's David.

Petey likes things perfect. Perfect desk. Perfect pencils. Perfect plan. Then a sock puppet project starts sliding somewhere he can't control.

Every classroom has a kid who is quietly terrified of getting something wrong, and that kid rarely shows up in school stories because they aren't causing any trouble. They're just miserable about the possibility.

Petey gets to find out that not everything worth doing has to come out perfectly.

Especially sock puppets. Honestly, a perfect sock puppet would be suspicious.

Which One for Which Kid

Why School Comedy Works

Here's the thing I noticed building this list.

School comedy has a structural advantage: the audience already knows what's supposed to happen.

You're supposed to raise your hand. David doesn't.

You're supposed to share. The cookie crew can't work out how.

You're supposed to make friends. Penelope eats hers.

You're supposed to use a sensible amount of glue. Matty has left the building.

The rule gives the joke something to push against, and the kid supplies the rule for free. No setup required.

That's also why these land well in the first weeks of a school year, when you're already talking about expectations and nerves and mistakes anyway.

One last thing, and I mean it.

A funny school book does not need to teach a school lesson. Not every story has to arrive carrying an educational objective under one arm.

Sometimes the best thing a school story can do is make a classroom feel like somewhere stories belong.

Laugh. Point at the picture. Argue about whether Penelope was really going to eat that pony. Read another one.

School has plenty of serious moments already. Books don't have to add more just to prove they're helping.

Readit?

"Can I go to school with Penelope?"

No.

"Why?"

You are shaped like a snack.

"Good point."

For the wider shelf, here are the funniest picture books, all scored, and books for reluctant readers if that's the fight in your house.

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit

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