Nearly six months ago I wrote a book review about “A funny thing happened to Simon Sidebottom“.  My son still lists this as one of his favourite books – although he did draw the line as dressing up as the character for book week.

So I was very pleased when the second book came out and was eager to get it for him.  The second in the series is called “A funny thing happened to Simon Sidebottom 2, Too Cool For School“.  Yes – it is quite a long title.

Now to give a quick update my eldest son is nine, loves technology, science and screens, and most of the time will refuse to do much outside of these topics.  While he used to enjoy reading it is now a battle where I buy multitudes of books and he may read one of them (thankfully my youngest son, aged 7, loves to read).

About two weeks ago I walked up to him with the new book while he was laying on the couch playing his iPod.  To my surprise he put it down straight away and opened the book.  This alone is a massive win and a credit to the author, P. Crumble, of how good the first book in the series was.

As per the first book this one once again is a Choose your own adventure style book with quirky font, funny images, gross jokes and crazy nicknames.  The first thing I heard from him was laughter followed by an explanation that the principal, Mr Smart-Fells, gets called Mr Fart Smells and the teacher, Miss Graff, gets called Miss Giraffe.  This is the perfect sort of humour for my boys who spend a ridiculous amount of time discussing bodily functions and smells, as well as crazy songs and names for everything.

The second massive win, and credit to the author and illustrator, is that my son then proceeded to take the book with him to his brothers karate lesson where he normally stares at his iPod for the hour.  He then proceeded to read the book for the first 30 minutes.  I think I nearly fell over from shock – he chose the book over the iPod.

Now I can’t tell you much about the content as the only things I have gotten out of my son so far were the funny names of the staff at the school, that Simon still calls his sister Snot Face and “it is really good” (his exact words when I asked what I should write in my review).  However if you have children around my kids age who are obsessed with this type of humour then I highly recommend it.  If it can get my son away from screens for nearly an hour straight in one go then it is a big thumbs up for me.

I look forward to any other books released by this author.