How To Win The Science Fair When You’re Dead, bonkers fun for 8 and up

How To Win The Science Fair When You’re Dead is the absolute best kind of click bait. I don’t care what the star of JAG is doing now or what happens next in the photo that might have had impeccable timing. I am a little curious, but not enough to unleash the torrent of spam or viruses that’ll be opened up to my computer. This book has that kind of title. Its predecessors, How to Sell Your Family to the Aliens and How to Properly Dispose of Planet Earth were like that also. For us this series has gone from enjoyable to great and now indispensable.

How To Win The Science Fair When You’re Dead is funny, really funny. I started reading it when I was exhausted and didn’t stop until I was halfway through the book and physically had to put it down. The book was promptly finished the next night. I was quite proud of myself in how quickly I read it, until I gave it to our nine-year old at 7:30 the following evening. He sauntered into the office around 9:15 asking for another book.

I politely asked him to finish the book that he was reading, lest him put it down and lose interest. “Oh, I finished How To Win The Science Fair When You’re Dead”, he said, “It’s much better the one before it”. I was skeptical so I asked him some questions about Science Fair.

What about the monsters? What about the girls? What about Squeep? How did it end? Parents of voracious readers know this line of questions. They allow us to discern if the book was legitimately read and understood by children who sometimes don’t tell you enough.

Sure enough, he filled in all of the blanks to my questions.

If you’ve read the first two books in this series you must read this. The bonkers, out of this world-yet entirely relatable situations that Happy Conklin finds himself will suck in readers aged 8 and up. If you’re in third grade and up you need to read this series from Paul Noth. Our youngest is 8, but in second grade and not that well of reader yet. In a year, with a little effort and reading everyday he’ll be able to start the series right with How to Sell Your Family to the Aliens.

How To Win The Science Fair When You’re Dead is so original and changes its orientation so frequently that it’s challenging to describe the plot. It blends science-fiction, humor and family in such a perfect manner that you won’t want to put the book down. If you haven’t read the first two books there is a small, comic book introduction that gets you up to speed.

Essentially, in her bid to rule the universe, Happy’s grandmother has been creating consumer products that make people lazy. She also impersonates wrestlers, has bought off alien armies and is about the kill, torture or maim her grandson.

Each chapter is short, another reason you’ll fly through the book without noticing it. That page count includes the occasional pages that have drawings on half or full pages. It’s not the comic book panel format that you see at the start of the book. It is drawn in the same manner and this is a book, through and through. Sometimes when parents see kids willingly running towards a book they might assume that they’re doing so because it’s loaded with potty humor. That’s not the case here.

This is the book that elementary and middle school libraries need to have. It’s laugh out loud funny-and it’s fun the read. For us, this was reading comfort food. The situations were incredibly creative and were completely unpredictable. It also used our imagination to a degree that hasn’t been exercised by a book in a long time. The situations were fun to think about and then ending provided a satisfying conclusion or a great jumping off point for more stories.