By Jon Scieszka
A teacher says you can think of almost everything as a math problem, and the next morning a child wakes up cursed.
Mrs. Fibonacci says one careless thing on a Monday and by Tuesday morning our narrator is doomed. Getting dressed is a problem. Breakfast is a problem. The school bus, the cafeteria, the birthday cupcakes, the clock, the shoes, the river of milk. Every single thing that happens splits open into a question, and the questions get sillier and harder at the same time, until she is doing sums in her sleep. Then she works out how to break the curse, which involves cutting something in half, and wakes up free. On the last page, the science teacher opens his mouth.
This is a proper Scieszka and Smith book, which means it's a comedy about math class rather than a story with math in it. There's no plot to speak of, just a frame and a hundred jokes hung on it, and it's very funny. Lane Smith's collage pages are crowded with things to find, so a child will go back through it. The thing to know is that the questions are not all decoration. Some are throwaway gags and some are chewy, and the best of them have no answer at all, which is the point. It's the one book here that speaks to the child who has decided math is a torment, because it's on their side.