For Ages
10 to 99

*Now available in paperback with a brand new title: Kaboom Academy!* 

“Graduates of Wayside School will fit right in at the decidedly unconventional Kaboom Academy.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
Forget everything you know about middle school while reading “this amusing and lighthearted story [that] pokes fun at traditional education, while celebrating nonconformity, individuality, and even oddity” (School Library Journal).
 
A new middle school has just opened in Horsemouth, New Hampshire: Kaboom Academy. It’s a place where cannons go off in the middle of school assemblies, pills contain actual information, and multiplication is made, er, real. (Read: You ever wonder what it would be like if there were two of you? How about four? How about eight? Well, you’re about to find out!) The school’s new students—and the Journalism 1A class in particular—can’t believe all the shenanigans that go on. Who’s really in charge of this groundbreaking academy for boys and girls who’ve fallen out of love with learning? And what does it mean to “blow up the model for middle school”?

 A 2015 Children's Choice 

An Excerpt fromMiddle-School Cool

1
Journalism 1A
It was the last period during the first day of school, and the students were exhausted. The day had started with a long bus ride past hayfields, cornfields, potato fields, and apple orchards, over a creek, under a bridge, around a large pond, into a forest of white birch and spruce, out of a forest of white birch and spruce, finally ending at the school. Once the students disembarked, they had only a short time to stretch their legs, not long enough to fully appreciate the colonial architecture of the gray two-story main building and the surrounding yellow cottages, before they were quickly ushered into the auditorium, which was in fact a repurposed barn. The entire facility reeked of old-fashioned New England simplicity, tranquility, and charm. Most of the students and their parents would never have guessed that it had once been an insane asylum.
Despite the traditional appearance of the physical facility, things were definitely different at this school. For instance, the bell schedule had been replaced by a blast schedule. Instead of signaling…