Funny stories of growing up: Knucklehead, by Jon Scieszka

When I read a few chapters aloud to my students, they were literally in hysterics. There were shouts of, “I’ve done that!” and “My mom would flip out if she knew I did this stuff, too!”. It especially seemed to connect with boys but I had quite a few girls ask to get on the waiting list, too." (see The Reading Zone for her full review).

Here's a preview video to whet your appetite (courtesy of Penguin's new Screening Room):

This chapter had me laughing aloud - it brought back memories of kids throwing up in the car, cat throw up, long car trips, and of course kids piled into a station wagon:

Chapter 33: Car Trip

Of all the Scieszka brother memories, I believe it was a family car trip that gave us our finest moment of brotherhood. We were driving cross-country from Michigan to Florida, all of us, including the family cat (a guy cat, naturally), in the family station wagon. Somewhere mid-trip we stopped at one of those Stuckey's rest-stop restaurants to eat and load up on Stuckey's candy.

We ate lunch, ran around like maniacs in the warm sun, then packed back into the station wagon—Mom and Dad up front, Jim, Jon, Tom, Gregg, Brian, Jeff, and the cat in back. Somebody dropped his Stuckey's Pecan Log Roll on the floor. The cat found it and must have scarfed every bit of it, because two minutes later we heard that awful ack ack ack sound of a cat getting ready to barf.

The cat puked up the pecan nut log. Jeff, the youngest and smallest (and closest to the floor) was the first to go. He got one look and whiff of the pecan-nut cat yack and blew his own sticky lunch all over the cat. The puke-covered cat jumped on Brian. Brian barfed on Gregg. Gregg upchucked on Tom. Tom burped a bit of Stuckey lunch back on Gregg. Jim and I rolled down the windows and hung out as far as we could, yelling in group-puke horror.

All in all, Knucklehead has everything that you'd want in summer reading for kids who might be a bit reluctant to pick something up: lots of laughs, body humor (just ask them about "crossing swords"), funny pictures and short chapters.

If you'd like to read more, check out these links:
Fuse #8's review
NPR Weekend Edition story
The Reading Zone - a teacher's review

Find it at your local public library, an independent bookstore near you, or Amazon.