We Will Rock Our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins

Hey, Story Seekers!

Penelope Rex has a problem.

Everybody keeps noticing the Rex part.

Big dinosaur. Big teeth. Probably thinking about lunch.

But Penelope would like you to notice something else.

She rocks.

Actual guitar.

We're exploring We Will Rock Our Classmates, written and illustrated by Ryan T. Higgins.

Readit has a solution already.

"More amplifiers."

How many?

"All of them."

Book Breakdown

Look at the edge of that stage.

Penelope is mid rock-god lean with a red electric guitar, and off to the side, in his bowl, is Walter.

The goldfish came to the show.

If you read We Don't Eat Our Classmates, you'll understand why Penelope and Walter do not have what I'd call a relaxed professional relationship.

This is book two, and Penelope's problem has changed. In the first book she couldn't stop eating her classmates. Here the trouble is that everybody has decided what she is.

When the class plays pretend, Penelope is always the dinosaur. She'd like to play dentist, thank you.

When she tries to draw a deer, the deer bolts, and Penelope calls after it one of the best lines in the book: she won't eat him, she doesn't even have any mustard.

People see dinosaur. Penelope sees a kid who likes reading, drawing, playing, and above all music.

So when Mrs. Noodleman announces a talent show, Penelope knows exactly what she's doing. Rock and roll.

Then rehearsal happens, and the nerves arrive. Somebody questions whether a dinosaur can even play guitar, and Penelope's confidence goes straight through the floor.

She pulls out of the show.

Her dad talks her back up, gently, by pointing out that being a T. rex is one part of her and not the whole list. Her parents are also worried she isn't eating enough, because she's only had fifty-two burgers.

The next morning her classmates give her the other half of the push. They don't want her to perform alone.

They want to be in the band.

And she rocks.

For teachers and librarians: Lexile 540L · ATOS 2.8 · 768 words · AR Quiz 509124 · 0.5 points. Disney-Hyperion, July 21, 2020. Forty-eight pages.

Disney lists ages 3 to 5; Kirkus goes 4 to 8, and the older end fits better here because the feelings are more complicated than in book one. Goodreads Choice Award nominee, 2020.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

A reviewer named Dave read this with his family and wrote a line that I'd hang on the wall of every children's publisher in the country.

He called it one of the rare books that really gets kids, "written for them and not for parents or for some social purpose. Just for laughs, basically."

That's the whole argument for this book, and it's the thing I care most about in my own work.

Because on paper this is a self-esteem story, and self-esteem stories are where picture books go to become homework. You know the shape. A character feels bad, an adult delivers a speech, everybody learns.

Higgins refuses. He keeps the jokes running the entire time.

Penelope wants to play dentist instead of dinosaur. The deer won't hold still. The mustard line. Fifty-two burgers is a light snack.

The comedy never steps aside to let the lesson through, which is precisely why the lesson survives.

And Penelope's problem is the right one. She isn't scared because she can't play. She knows she loves music.

She's scared because she's suddenly wondering whether everybody else is right about what a dinosaur is supposed to be.

Kids know that feeling exactly. You're the funny one. The quiet one. The sporty one. And once the room has decided, showing them a different side of you feels genuinely dangerous.

Now the honest comparison, because you'll want it before buying.

The first book is funnier. This one has more heart.

Kirkus said the same thing and so did readers, and I agree with all of them. Nothing here matches a T. rex eating an entire kindergarten class. That's a once-per-career premise.

What you get instead is a better feeling and slightly fewer laughs.

For reading aloud, the gift is Penelope's emotional range. Excited, then nervous, then completely deflated, then rebuilt, then a rock star. That's five distinct settings to play, and a character who feels identical on page one and page forty-eight gives you nothing.

Readit's Review

"Walter's back."

He is.

"He's a fish."

Excellent observation.

"Penelope is scared of him."

Also true.

"But she's a T. rex."

Correct.

"That's backwards."

That's why it's funny.

"Could Walter actually eat Penelope?"

No.

"Then why is she scared?"

Have you seen Walter?

"Yes."

There you go.

"Best part was the deer."

Why?

"She says she doesn't have mustard. Like that's the only problem."

That is exactly the joke.

"The deer was right to run."

The deer was right to run.

What Others Think

Goodreads has it at 4.24 out of 5 from 2,773 ratings and 372 reviews, with 82 percent at four or five stars and almost nobody below three.

The best evidence I found is a family that reads all the Goodreads-nominated picture books together every year and rates them individually. Their scores here are worth reading carefully, because of who gave them.

Hank, 14, gave it four stars. Harry, 15, gave it 4.5 and called it one of the best books of the year.

Those are teenagers voluntarily rating a picture book about a dinosaur, and rating it high.

Their dad gave it four and supplied the line I quoted above about books written for kids rather than for parents. He also catalogued the jokes that landed in his house, which is how I know the mustard line works on people who are old enough to drive.

Calista lands where most readers do: she loved the first book more, gave this one four stars, and named her favorite part without hesitation. Walter. "I love the idea of a dinosaur being scared of a goldfish."

She also flagged the deer scene, and reports that she guffawed, which is a word I don't get to use often enough.

The criticism is mild and consistent: this is the gentler, less riotous sequel, and readers who came for the shock of book one notice the drop. Publishers Weekly praised the message about pursuing what you love against other people's expectations, while noting the animal-versus-human logic gets a bit fuzzy if you poke it.

It does. Don't poke it.

Belly Laugh Scale

4 out of 5: Big-Time Belly Laughs

Four, and it's a different four from the first book.

We Don't Eat Our Classmates earned a five because its premise is a machine. Dinosaur goes to school, dinosaur eats school, school objects. You cannot beat that.

Here the laughs come from character instead of catastrophe. Walter. The mustard. Fifty-two burgers. The gap between how terrifying Penelope looks and how small she feels backstage.

That's plenty for a four, and the fact that teenagers are still laughing at it tells you the jokes are real and not just cute.

The fifth face goes to the first book, which had a bigger engine. This one traded some of it for something the first one didn't have.

Penelope rocks. Walter remains deeply suspicious.

Final Explorer Verdict

Ages 4 to 8, for kids who like dinosaurs, music, school stories, or talent shows.

But the kid I'd actually hand it to is the one who has started saying some version of that's not something people like me do.

Penelope's answer isn't a pep talk. It's that she was already the thing she was afraid to be, and she needed one person to say so and a few friends to stand next to her.

What makes it work is that Higgins never turns her into a motivational poster. She's still weird. Still hungry. Still frightened of a goldfish.

She just stops treating one true fact about herself as the only one.

Read book one first if you haven't. This lands better when you already know what Penelope did to her classmates and exactly what Walter is capable of.

There's a bridge to my own shelf that fits without forcing. Little Jimmy Says, "Same Is Lame" comes at it from a different angle, but both books are pushing back on the same thing: somebody else's narrow idea of who a kid is supposed to be.

Readit?

"Yeah?"

What would you do in the talent show?

"Eat the microphone."

You're a worm.

"Exactly. Nobody expects it."

I have accidentally proven the entire point of the book.

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit