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.

Dave Barry Slept Here - Dave Barry

   1989; 192 pages.  Full Title: Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Historical Humor; Parody; Political Humor.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    Here’s a little history question for you: name the three ships that comprised Columbus’s fleet when he sailed west to discover the New World in 1492.

 

    If you answered “who’s Columbus?”, your knowledge of American history is, sadly, probably about average.

 

    If you answered “the Good Ship Lollipop, HMS Pinafore, and the Starship Enterprise”, you’ve been watching too much TV.

 

    If you answered “the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria”, you are absolutely correct.  Give yourself a pat on the back.

 

    And if you answered “the Ninja, the Pina Colada, and the Heidy-Ho III, you’ve read Dave Barry’s book Dave Barry Slept Here, and you’re to be commended for your excellent literary tastes.

 

What’s To Like...

    Dave Barry turns his witty and comedic eye on your old and boring American History class in Dave Barry Slept Here, using 21 chapters (plus a great introduction wherein you will learn the significance of October 8th) to cover a timeline starting with the original settlers coming across the land bridge from Asia during the last Ice Age all the way up to the present day, which in this case, since this book was published in 1989, was the 1988 presidential election.

 

    The emphasis here is on silliness and humor; if you have a history exam tomorrow, you really shouldn’t use this book as your pseudo “Cliff Notes”.  There’s a smattering of maps and graphs, and a whole bunch of footnotes, the latter of which would make even the late, great Terry Pratchett proud.  Each chapter closes with a couple of “Discussion Questions” which are much more interesting than those that were in your musty old history textbook.

 

    I liked the attention given to “historical details” even if they are mostly figments of the author's imagination.  The Bill of Rights is presented in easy-to-understand lingo.  Light is shed on the sex scene between James Madison and the Federalist Papers, which might motivate me to read that tome.  It was nice to see e.e. “buster” cummings get mentioned; ditto for “Senator Sam” Ervin (D – Okeefenokee) of Watergate fame.  It was enlightening to learn about the British (and factual) “cock-a-leeky-soup” and the translation of the Spanish name “Juan Ponce de Leon”, which in English we are assured is “John punched the Lion”.  Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t point out the special attention the book gives to the contributions of women and minority groups.

 

    Interwoven among all the fun-&-games are some subtle political jibes, including some eerie prescience about someone who would become president long after this book was published.  Nevertheless, the amount of enjoyment you get from reading Dave Barry Slept Here will most likely depend on how much interest you have in American History and to what degree your sense of humor can tolerate pure silliness.  

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 258 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.90/5 based on 5,568 ratings and 238 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    This book does not waste the reader’s valuable brain cells with such trivial details as when various events actually occurred.  Oh, sure, it contains many exact dates – it is, after all, a history book – but you will notice that we have tried to make these dates as easy as possible to remember by making them all start with “October 8”, as in “October 8, 1729” or “October 8, 1953”.  We chose this particular date after carefully weighing a number of important historical criteria, such as (a) it is our son’s birthday.  (loc. 99)

 

    The first major president to be elected after the War of 1812 was President Monroe Doctrine, who became famous by developing the policy for which he is named.  This policy, which is still in effect today, states that:

    1. Other nations are not allowed to mess around with the internal affairs of nations in this hemisphere.

    2. But we are.

    3. Ha-ha-ha.  (loc. 746)

 

“Ask not what your country cannot do that you cannot do, nor what cannot be done by neither you nor your country, whichever is greater.”  (loc. 1600)

    I can’t find much to quibble about in Dave Barry Slept Here.  There’s only a smidgen of cusswords in the book (16 in the first 50%, of which a dozen were the rather mild “hell”), but even that surprised me a bit, since I don’t recall his newspaper columns containing any.

 

    Dave Barry pokes fun at politicians of both parties, but if you happen to tilt towards the right, I predict you’ll take umbrage at some of his points, particularly the utterly senseless invasion of Grenada, which at the time of the book’s publication was a recent event.

 

    Finally, the book skips over the details of all the wars in United States’ history because, let’s face it, there’s nothing funny about killing and shooting.  Still, learning about wars happened to be the favorite part of my American History classes, much more interesting than studying things like stock market crashes the invention of the cotton gin.

 

    Dave Barry Slept Here is a short (192 pages), fast, easy, and delightfully funny read.  It may be unsuitable for your history class, but if it’s 8 o’clock at night and you have a book report due tomorrow, and you haven’t even started reading something yet, this book may be a GPA-saver for you.

 

    7½ Stars.  This madcap approach to spoofing history has been done before, by an author I thoroughly enjoyed in my teenage days, Richard Armour.  A few years back I reread the book he wrote about US history, It All Started With Columbus, and I've reviewed it here.  If Dave Barry Slept Here tickles your fancy, you might go looking for some of Armour’s books.  Be forewarned though, they seem to be few and far between in used-book stores.

Dave Barry's Greatest Hits - Dave Barry

1988; 289 pages. Genre : Waiting Room Filler. Overall Rating : B-..

    I've had occasion to spend a lot of time in doctors' waiting rooms these past three months. I learned quickly to take something to read with me, as waiting rooms have the worst magazines : Belly-Button Lint Illustrated; Oil Filter Digest; Healthy Yawning; etc. You get the idea.

.I never knew if my wait was going to be 2 minutes or 2 hours, so Dave Barry's Greatest Hits was an ideal book to take with me. Consisting of 81 of his 1980's newspaper columns for the Miami Herald, and at an average of 2 pages in length; there was always a convenient place to stop when finally called.

What's To Like...
Dave Barry is kind of an urbanized Bill Bryson. He is laugh-out-loud funny, and covers all sort of themes - current events, sports, politics, TV, history, etc. If you think he can only write about humorous absurdisms, think again. His column about the loss of his father ("A Million Words") will put a lump in your throat.
.
The only drawback to this book is that it's dated. If you remember the 80's it's NBD. But if you don't, then his cracks about people like Gary Hart, Liberace, Caspar Weinberger, Chuck Colson, and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band may have you scratching your head. I recommend DBGH for the next time you have to get a physical. Everybody else in the waiting room will be jealous of you when you keep chuckling as you read.

.

Excerpts...
As far as I can tell, our second basewoman is a pretty good baseball player, better than I am anyway, but there's no way to know for sure because if the ball gets anywhere near her, a male comes barging over from, say, right field, to deal with it. She's been on the team for three seasons now, but the males still don't trust her. They know that if she had to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, deep in her soul, she would probably elect to save the infant's life, without even considering whether there were men on base. (218-19)

.So I go in for my last words, because I have to go back home, and my mother and I agree I probably won't see him again. I sit next to him on the bed, hoping he can't see that I'm crying. "I love you, Dad," I say. He says : "I love you too. I'd like some oatmeal."
So I go back out to the living room. where my mother and my wife and my son are sitting on the sofa, in a line, waiting for the outcome, and I say, "He wants some oatmeal." I am laughing and crying about this, My mother thinks maybe I should go back in and have a more meaningful last talk, but I don't.
Driving home, I'm glad I didn't. I think : He and I have been talking ever since I learned how. A million words. All of them final, now. I don't need to make him give me any more, like souvenirs. I think : Let me not define his death on my terms. Let him have his oatmeal. I can hardly see the road. (145)