Customer Reviews

The Cafeteria Lady from the Black Lagoon

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Mike Thaler has a way of entertaining children. My first graders have giggled their way through all of the the "Black Lagoon" series. The premise is that the boy has a very vivid imagination, and finds out in the end that his fears were for not. This is NOT a critique of school lunch, rather the opposite. The little boy fears school lunch will be awful...and finds out it's so good he wants to go back and have seconds! This series, however fun, is not for the humor-challenged among us. It's all just for fun!

Wanda Belch is the new cafeteria lady at school. Rumor has it that kids found shoes in her food at her old job and that she now drives a garbage truck. But the kids at her new job soon find out that lunch and their new cafeteria lady aren't as scary as they thought.

This is a great book that not only teaches kids how untrue rumors can be and how silly some fears can be, but also that appearances are deceiving. It does NOT, as a previous person mentioned, deride or make a mockery of the food service industry. It actually shows kids that their cafeteria workers are not evil, but honest and hard-working people. Anyone who thinks differently of this book has obviously NOT read it.

This is a great book and I highly recommend it.

As my son was being prepped for his transition from preschool to kindergarten, we bought a few of the Black Lagoon books. He found them to be hilarious and it helped take off the edge when going to his new school.

These are funny books!

I got this book for my older son, who checked this book out at the library at his elementary school last year. So, I already knew what to expect. It's a very cute book and teaches a bit of a lesson. Don't believe everthing you hear about someone else. Transaction was great, flawless.

Written at the 2nd Grade level, "The Cafeteria Lady from the Black Lagoon" is certainly a kid pleaser. Mike Thaler's signature humor has just the sort of silliness that they love and Jared Lee's artwork, which has just the right sort of gross (kid-friendly) compliments his text wonderfully.

The book is about the new cafeteria lady, whose name happens to be Wanda Belch. Her arrival is announced and pretty soon rumors are flying and the kids' imaginations get out of hand with them imaging all sorts of horrible things. Mike Thaler uses these rumors to convey the jokes and a subtle message about the nature of rumors.

For Example:

All the kids say that Wanda uses natural ingredients
in her dishes... (like) organic rats in her ratatouille...


Talking Points :::
"The Cafeteria Lady from the Black Lagoon" is a great spoof of the all things 'cafeteria'. Written at the second grade level (AR 2.8) it falls into the category of what I call 'motivational reading'. Which is to say that kids find it an enjoyable, quick read that motivates them to read more.

I like that this story isn't just empty calories. It packs an important message that rumors can be hurtful and erroneous.

Very young children might not 'get' the humor, and adults might want to consider whether making fun of school is a right message for the Kindergarten and under crowd. Certainly, I didn't start sharing this series my kids until after they both knew what school was really like.

Pam
mom and reviewer at BooksForKids-reviews


The Cafeteria Lady from the Black Lagoon

* Accelerated Reading level : 2.8
* Paperback: 32 pages
* Publisher: Scholastic (September 1, 1998)

I fail to see the humor in the author's thesis. The representation of school lunch as "garbage" is not only unfitting and inappropriate, it is inaccurate.

School foodservice programs throughout the country are not only customer oriented and cost effective, they provide the main source of nutrition to over 25 million of our nation's school children, most of whom live at or below the poverty level. To use this subject matter as a means of humor is not just offensive. It is without merit or basis of fact.