Customer Reviews

Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a reading tutor I am always looking for high interest books for my dyslexic students. This book is perfect--it's funny and has a lot of lively pictures of the cafeteria Lunch Lady saving the day, plus the words used are a good mix of mainly easy and with some challenging ones thrown in too. I have a very smart eleven year old student who can only read at the first or early second grade level and he loves this book. It takes him a long time, but not only can he read almost all of it himself, I have to take the book out of his hands at the end of our session because he is completely engrossed.

Obviously, the very best thing about this series is that Krosoczka chose a lunch lady for his undercover superhero. That made me laugh even before I discovered related details such as weaponry. In a brief scene before the title page (comparable to the scene before the opening credits roll in a movie), we see two bank robbers being stopped by a heroic figure on a motorcycle that has a sloppy joe button. Yep, it's hard to get away when your van is sliding around on a wave of sloppy joe filling.

The child characters in the book are a trio of average kids: Hector, Terrence, and Dee. When they are bothered by the school bully, Milmoe, a new substitute teacher saves the day--but there's something very strange about the sub, and soon Lunch Lady is trying to figure out just what he's up to. She is assisted by another lunch lady named Betty, who is like James Bond's gadget guy, Q.

The kitchen humor continues with a hidden lab behind a fridge and gadgets made out of things like spatulas, not to mention weapons formed from fish sticks. One of my favorite pages is a view of the spy screens in Lunch Lady's lab, which show what the teachers are doing. For instance, we learn that "Mr. Johnson is reciting poetry" to his class. Of course, the poem he is reciting begins, "Beans, beans, good for your heart..." before trailing off to be completed by amused readers.

Considering the title, you will not be shocked to discover that the substitute turns out to be a robot. What's fun to follow is how Lunch Lady figures this out and what she does about it. Meanwhile, our intrepid trio of kids have begun to spy on her. This, of course, allows them to participate in the obligatory climactic fight scene.

Lunch Lady herself is a delightful creation. Her cuss words in tense moments are vegetables: "Sweet potato!" and "Cauliflower!" When she tails the villain, she says, "I'm on him like cheese on macaroni!" L.L. is brave and knows some great fight moves, but she is also dedicated to providing school meals--a satisfyingly surreal combination.

Like the Babymouse books, Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute has an inherent sweetness. The humor is goofy and lovable, the trio of children are ordinary enough to represent Everyreader, and the fight scenes are tongue in cheek. I'm very happy to see another graphic novel series served up in the children's book cafeteria. There's no mystery meat here: second and third graders are going to eat these up!

Move over Batman. Move over Phantom. This hero lives a little closer to our kids' reality. Enter, the Lunch Lady, cook to the hungry, nutritional guardian for the addicted, and protector of Thompson Brook School!

What do you do when a substitute seems out of the ordinary, seems too eager,and too perfect? Homework from a sub alerts the kids to a situation gone amiss, and once Lunch Lady monitors everyone else, a disturbing pattern arises! Is Teacher of the Year worth that much? How does he get the $ on a teachers salary to build so many robots?

Jarrett J Krosoczka has created a marvelous book that breaks the convention that the cafeteria cook is old and crotchety. He packs this hero with a boiler room, kitchen weapons, and an assistant with an imagination that Mr Popeil never had.

I loved this book and highly recommend it to all ages.

Tim Lasiuta

My 8 year old son HATES to read. I have tried all kinds of books and authors. At wits end I saw that one of his favorite authors when he was in preschool, had come out with a graphic novel in his age range and I was hopful. He LOVED it. He did not want me to stop reading and when the first one was done, we ran out and bought the second one. My son loved the lunchlady idea and was hysterical over her gadgets. It is a good clean and fun graphic novel without the "graphic". Perfect for even my 6 year old to read. I am so happy to have finally found something my 3rd grader enjoys. Hope Krosoczka keeps the series going!

This new graphic novel for kids by Jarrett Krosoczka is laugh-out-loud funny and perfect for summer reading. I mean, what's not to love about a comic book that features a vigilante lunch lady as the hero? Filled with silly puns and hilarious hijinx, this work of comic genius is destined for greatness. Kids, teachers, parents, librarians, kid-lit-loving grownups and, yes, LUNCH LADIES will love this title.

This graphic novel is hilarious and fantastic! You discover that the Lunch Lady has some seriously cool super powers and a sidekick that invents all sorts of cool gadgets. They have a secret room behind the broiler where they meet. Some awesome gadgets found in this book: spatula that turns into a mini-copter, milk-cam, lunch-try laptop, mole communicator that goes to a Spork Phone, rubber glove suction cups, cannoli-oculars, chicken nugget bombs, fish stick nunchucks, hairnet net, and an electronic bananarang. Just what you need - a lunch lady who fights evil. :)

OK, so our daughter read the 4th book in the series first and was hooked! Let me start off by saying she was NOT a fan of reading before she read this book and seemed to resist reading on her own. Well, she was loving the first book she was reading so much I ordered the rest of the series. Amazon was speedy quick with delivery and she devoured this book in just one day! She is so proud and could not wait to get her hands on the next one. So glad I ordered all of them! (FYI-It does not seem to matter which order they read the books)
Big thumbs up!

When I first saw this book I was just like this seems like this is going to be a good book. I wanted to know what a lunch lady needs to do about fighting bad people. So I added to my wish list all the series from Amazon. So when I was at the book store and I saw all the series. My mom said I could only pick one so I grabbed the cyborg substitute teacher book. When I was up in the morning and I started reading the book I started laughing because the two lunch ladies were using a bunch of food words and no other author thinks that way and I was thinking this author is good and I thought the book was so funny!!! And that's why I really liked the book.