A Class Full of Lizards: The Grade Six Survival Guide 2
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley April 27, 2021
Author Alison Hart
Distributor: Allen & Unwin Children's
ISBN: 9781760877378
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Children's
Release Date: March 2021
Website: https://www.allenandunwin.com
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Enfant Terrible Jesse is back and it is Term 4, the last term of Year 6, the final year of Primary School before he and his friends move into High School and things are not going as well as expected. Not only is his family being forced by his mother to go on a heath diet, Yuk, but there is change happening at school as the classes have to prepare for the end of year celebrations and ceremonies.
Ian who was a student teacher last term is now the new Wellbeing Officer, which Jesse finds out when he gets called up to the Principals Office to offer Alex, his best friend, moral support, but what for is beyond Jesse’s understanding. It seems that Alex is being considered for a scholarship at St Bennett’s college and he has to go there every Wednesday for the rest of term!
That piece of news was very disturbing as he and Jesse had been friends since forever and he had always thought they would go to the same High School together. But things only get worse when Mrs Leeman sets the task of studying ‘our closest neighbours’ as a project to be used to display for the end of term assembly. And if that is not bad enough, he realises the only way he may be able to get a decent breakfast, seeing as Mum is not changing her mind about the ‘healthy diet’, is to join the school cross country running group, something that Jesse has always considered as nothing to do with him.
Add getting talked into adopting a fish tank full of fish, his prep buddy Thomas Moore, who also seems to have adopted Jesse and his friends at recess and lunch, going on and on about the shingle back lizard that lives in the wall Jesse and his mates consider as theirs and you have term full of madness, mayhem and a few life lessons to be learned.
A Class Full of Lizards from Alison Hart is a riotous romp through the last term of school when change begins to be felt in a big way, life does not always go as thought and learning often arrives in mysterious ways, all adding up to that weird thing called ‘growing up’!