Daily children’s book recommendations and events from Anita Silvey.
Discover the stories behind the children’s book classics . . .
The new books on their way to becoming classics . . .
And events from the world of children’s books—and the world at large.
Find a Book!
Search the archives for recommendations by age group, book type, subject, date, and more.
This week America celebrates National School Lunch Week. And as that old ditto goes: “Teachers come and teachers go,/It’s the lunch lady who you get to know.” But how well do you really know the lunch lady? Do you know what she does when she leaves the school? In our book of the day, an inquiring group of kids ask these questions and discover some amazing answers. For in their school, the lunch lady is someone to be feared. She serves both lunch—and justice—in equal measure.
When author-illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka went back to visit his own elementary school as an adult, he saw the same lunch lady who had been working there when he was a child. After some time drawing and thinking about a book, he transformed her into a cafeteria worker by day, super heroine by night. She speeds on a motorcycle to stop robbers and enters abandoned warehouses to find criminals. In 2009 she took on one of her most difficult cases yet in Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute.
When Mr. Pasteur, a substitute teacher, shows up to take over the class of someone who hasn’t been sick in twenty years, the Lunch Lady gets suspicious. After she monitors school activities on a huge computer system, she decides to follow her suspect home. Unbeknownst to her, some students are tracking her as well—to discover what she actually does at night. Shocked to find the real answer to their question, they help her foil the evil plan of the science teacher Mr. Edison, who wants to replace the teaching staff with robots. The entire story is told in comic book format, perfect for first through third graders who like action-packed adventure mixed with fantasy. Or maybe it isn’t fantasy. Maybe a lot of lunch ladies drive motorcycles and fight crime in off hours. You will have to be the judge.
In the past few years, Jarrett J. Krosoczka has become one of our most popular authors with children. His Lunch Lady series demonstrates why. He remembers what he thought about as a child and knows how to entertain children and keep them laughing.
So before you celebrate School Lunch Week, ask an important question. What does your lunch lady do when she isn’t dishing out sloppy joes?
Here’s a passage from Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute:
Other books for this day
Also recommended:
- Lunch Lady and the League of Librarians by Jarrett J. Krosoczka
- Lunch Lady and the Author Visit Vendetta by Jarrett J. Krosoczka
Additional Information
A few other events for
- Happy birthday David Greenberg (A Tugging String, Don’t Forget Your Etiquette, Enchanted Lions).
- The infamous Nero becomes emperor of Rome in 54 A.D. Read Nero Corleone by Elke Heidenreich, illustrated by Quint Buchholz.
- In 1307 hundreds of Knights Templar in France are arrested by agents of King Phillip the Fair. It may have also been the birth date of Jaques de Molay (1244-1314), the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar. Read A Templar’s Apprentice: The Book of Tormod by Kat Black.
- The Whirlpool Galaxy, one of the most famous galaxies and easily observable by even amateur stargazers, is discovered in 1773 by French astronomer Charles Messier. Read Galaxies by Seymour Simon, NightWatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe by Terence Dickinson, and Henry and Mudge and the Starry Night by Cynthia Rylant.
- It’s International Skeptics Day. Read The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller.