"Black Lagoon Favorites" by Mike Thaler

My first children's book review!

At this morning's Rolling Readers session, I read the stories in Black Lagoon Favorites, which follows a young boy's wild, worst-case-scenario imaginings of his school's employees. The kids in Mrs. Jefferson's class loved them, and in fact had requested these Black Lagoon stories. Before starting this reading gig, I was stressing about choosing books that would be age-appropriate. Second-graders are usually eight or nine years old. Would a book intended for six-to-eight be an insult? Would nine-to-twelve be boring? It turns out what matters to these kids is, beatifically, a good story.