Who was the worst, the meanest, teacher you ever had? I once knew one that made a girl clean up her own mess when she got sick in class. A first grader! And another mountain of a man who’d bellow from the front table anytime he thought someone wasn’t paying attention. “Paul! Get up here! Bring your notebook!” And if that notebook wasn’t word-for-word synced with the overhead transparency, he’d tear it up and roar, “Get out of here! “F” for the day!” And the poor kid would find himself with an extra, impromptu study hall.
Well, those two have nothing on Miss Breakbone from Paul Fleischman’s The Dunderheads. Miss Breakbone has a real alligator for her alligator bag. She decorates her classroom with pictures of vicious predators. She gives herself gold stars when she makes kids cry. She has an electric chair. And, according to Miss Breakbone, she has never taught “such a scraping-together of fiddling, twiddling, time-squandering, mind-wandering, doodling, dozing, don’t-knowing dunderheads!”"
But Miss Breakbone goes too far one day when she confiscates a trash-to-treasure cat statue from one of her students, Theodore, who was saving it for his mother’s birthday present. Theodore, aka “Junkyard”, turns to our hero and narrator, the brilliant strategist “Einstein,” for help. Einstein enlists the expertise of the whole class to retrieve the cat from Miss Breakbone’s house. From “Hollywood” (who has watched every movie 11 times), to “Clips” (“His reading scores were low. His math scores were worse. But if they tested for paper-clip chains…”) to “Wheels” (who’s a bicycling nut), to “Pencil” (who can draw perfectly from memory), to “Spider” (who can climb anything), Einstein will need every Dunderhead and their crazy micro-talent to pull off the caper.
At 56 pages, The Dunderheads is longer than a typical picture book, and, while there’s enough action that younger kids will enjoy it, it’s audience really is older elementary kids with a little more experience under their belts. What kid hasn’t daydreamed of getting back at an adult who has done them wrong? This books taps right into that: readers can’t help but root for the underdog Dunderheads as they scheme to defeat evil Miss Breakbone.
Careful readers (especially grown-up ones) will find even more fun in the illustrations by David Roberts. Hollywood has posters up of a “West Side Anecdote.” One of Miss Breakbone’s gargoyles is yawning; the other is picking its nose. Miss Breakbone has a skull for a bedlamp. And my favorite: the fallen queen from Einstein’s chess board on the title page. That says it all, right there: “The Dunderheads were here!”
More about The Dunderheads
- School Library Journal (starred)
- Wisconsin State Journal
- Pink Me
- Just One More Book (podcast)
- Paul Fleischman’s website
And finally, the discussion question that’s begging to be asked after reading this book:
What would your classroom nickname be (have been)?
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009, | 
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Hi Max! Thanks for stopping by. It sounds like our blogs have a lot in common!
Beck
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It’s so important to draw attention to reading, and attract reluctant readers to it,especially boys. In fact, I’ve recently completed a feature magazine article on this subject that comes out in October, “Help for Struggling, Reluctant Readers.”
I grew up as a reluctant reader, in spite of the fact that my father published over 70 books. Now I write action-adventures & mysteries, especially for tween boys, that avid boy readers and girls enjoy just as much.
My blog, Books for Boys http://booksandboys.blogspot.com is dedicated to drawing attention to the importance of reading.
Keep up your good work.
Max Elliot Anderson
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