The Worst Class Trip Ever - Dave Barry

   2015; 224 pages.  Book 1 (out of 2) in the “Class Trip” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Junior High Adventure; Humorous Mystery; Juvenile Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Oh boy!  It’s time for the Culver Middle School class trip, and Wyatt Palmer is stoked.  Washington DC, here he comes!

 

    Well, the plane ride from Miami to Washington should be pretty neat.  And the class will go on tours of all sorts of museums, monuments, and government buildings.  But none of that is what has Wyatt excited.  He’s hoping that somehow his classmate, Suzana Delgado, will end up sitting close to him, maybe on the plane, maybe on the DC tour bus.  Maybe he can say something cute to her.

 

    But Wyatt knows he’s kidding himself.  Suzana will sit with all her friends in the “Hot & Popular Girls” crowd.  And Wyatt will be sitting with his all-too-appropriate group: The Nerd Boys.  Oh well, maybe there will be some other kind of excitement on this class trip.

 

    Be careful what you wish for, Wyatt.

 

What’s To Like...

    Wyatt is an 8^th-grader, so the target audience of Dave Barry’s The Worst Class Trip Ever is junior high-schoolers, particularly those of the nerdy category.  Amazon puts this book in a couple “Children’s" genres, but I think “Juvenile” would be a better label.

 

    I thought the character-development captured the junior high social caste system quite well.  Wyatt hangs around with fellow geeks, including Matt, who has a knack for getting himself and anyone around him into trouble, and “Gas Attack” Cameron, who is a flatulence fanatic.  Needless to say, the Hot/Popular Girls choose not to be anywhere near Wyatt and company.

 

    A pair of teachers accompany the kids to DC, but order falls apart quickly when Wyatt and Matt see two other airplane passengers examining something puzzling.  Luggage is swiped and hastily searched, but that just enhances the mystery.  Mayhem involving our heroes ensues, most of which is oblivious to the chaperones.

 

    Through all this Dave Barry’s madcap humor and storytelling shines brightly.  Yes, some of the antics are over-the-top, but that won’t bother the tween-agers reading this.  And even adult readers will be challenged to figure out just what the heck is going on.

 

    Everything builds to an equally outrageous ending.  It’s not particularly twisty; you know Wyatt’s going to save the day, be hailed as a hero, and impress the girl.  But 8^th-grade me would’ve loved reading how he manages to do that.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 1,194 ratings and 215 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.94*/5, based on 3,629 ratings and 597 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    ”So what was that about back there?  In the plane?”

    I shook my head.  “Those two weird guys… You saw them, right?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Well, I let Matt convince me they were trying to blow up the White House.”

    “On the plane?  Blow it up how?”

    “With a missile.  Or something.”

    She blinked.  “A missile?”

    “I know it sounds stupid.  It is stupid.  I can’t believe he got me to take it seriously.  I think Matt has this ability to lower the IQ of everybody around him.  It’s like a superpower.”  (21%)

 

    “Maybe we should tell the police,” I said.

    “You mean, like, the police who were just here and we finally got rid of them?”

    “I know, but maybe that was a mistake.  Those guys have Matt.”

    “And they said if we told the police, they’d kill him.”

    “They didn’t say they’d kill him.”

    She rolled her eyes.  “They said we’d never see him again, Wyatt.  What do you think they meant?  That they were taking him to Disney World?”  (37%)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Worst Class Trip Ever sells for $7.99 at Amazon right now.  The sequel, The Worst Night Ever, will cost you $9.99.  Most of Dave Barry’s “non-juvenile” e-books are in the $4.99-$13.99 price range.

 

They trained us for a lot of weird stuff in Secret Service school, but they did not prepare us for a kid to be vomited out of a flying dragon.  (92%)

    There’s zero profanity in The Worst Class Trip Ever, but that was expected.  There was one instance of a giant naked buttocks, and things close with a coming-of-age kiss, but trust me, there was nothing R-rated about either of those events.

 

    Adult readers might have issues with some of the plotline WTFs.  Explosives detonate within crowded Washington DC, yet no one is killed.  An airborne taxi driver conveniently escapes injury by falling out of the sky on a secret service agent.  And no, I won’t explain that last sentence.

 

    Your enjoyment of The Worst Class Trip Ever will depend on how well you can “reset” your reading mind back to the years you were in junior high school.  My 8-star rating presumes you can successfully do that, but to be honest, I struggled with it.  There’s still a lot of Dave Barry zaniness to entertain you here, even if you can only read this with your "adult" reading mind, but then your rating will likely be around 6-stars.

 

    8 Stars.  For the record, I too had an opportunity to take a junior high school class trip to Washington DC.  Google tells me the distance was 151 miles one way from where I lived, which meant we’d go by bus, not plane.  I played hooky that day.