No! I Won't Go to School
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Alonso Núnez’s playful story, Dave Morrison’s rollicking Spanish-to-English translation, and Bruna Assis Brasil’s imaginative illustrations offer a doomsday vision of a child’s first day of school that any young reader will recognize.
Zombies, monsters, and dragons stalk this book’s pages. Cries of despair echo through them. Prisons and dungeons lie in wait. Is this a nightmare? Is it an apocalypse? Well, yes—because it’s the day before our narrator’s first day of school, and all entreaties to his mother are falling on deaf ears. Why should he go to school when he already knows two letters, “N” and “O,” and he knows they spell NO!, which is exactly the word this occasion demands? Why aren’t these magic letters working anymore?
Lexile Level 490; F&P Level L
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A child's imagination inflates school fears in Mexico-based author N ez's first English-language book. The child who wears round glasses and has a swooping cowlick doesn't believe the hype: "Mom says I'll make friends,/ that the place is so cool,/ that I'll learn new things,/ that I'll really like school!" Instead, the child says "No!" to school, believing that "The teacher's a monster/ with big claws and four heads,/ jaws that can crush you,/ and eyes that turn red!" In sophisticated pen-and-ink and photographic collages, Brazilian illustrator Brasil renders the teacher as a hydra and the school bus as a horned monster, and sharp-featured students wear expressions of wide-mouthed terror. When the child's frightful fantasies turn out to be unfounded, readers may find it's a little bit of a letdown. Even so, N ez is effective at conveying the sense of doom that ruminating on the unknown can bring, while Brasil's art blends creaturely details and photographic accents to stylized effect. Ages 3 6.
