Kaboom Academy

Graduates of Wayside School will fit right in at the decidedly unconventional Kaboom Academy.”

—Kirkus Reviews

Forget everything you know about middle school while reading “this amusing and lighthearted story [that] pokes fun at traditional education, while celebrating nonconformity, individuality, and even oddity.”

—School Library Journal

When the journalism students of Kaboom Academy, an experimental private middle school, gather for the first time they aren’t sure what to expect. The brand new school has a lot of strange practices, from shooting off a cannon to mark the beginning of class, to the educational tools used for instruction, to the types of teachers he hires. Even the students enrolled in the school are unusual. On the newspaper staff alone the students seem uniquely odd.

First there is Jory, the editor in chief, likable, good looking, fearless but his strong desire to fly and his history of jumping off window ledges makes everyone around him nervous. Then there’s Edie, a horrible snoop who can’t stop herself from spying on people. Victoria is the brainiest of the bunch, and ruthlessly judgmental, but she cries all the time. Leo, who is legally blind, somehow lands the position of photographer. Aliya and Taliya the twins are so close they finish each other’s sentences. Hopelessly awkward Margo can’t seem to say anything without putting her foot in her mouth. Ruben the bully, already taller than the tallest teacher and still growing, has a soft spot for ballet. And Sam always showed up wearing a costume.

Once the students start gathering stories for the newspaper they start to see just how bizarre the school really is. Books are provided in pill form, where students swallow the book pill and immediately have the same knowledge as it they’d read the book. The math class has a multiplication table that is an actual table that literally multiplies whatever is placed upon it. The cafeteria serves food with suspicious ingredients and the Dean of Discipline uses highly questionable methods for controlling students who have broken the rules. The biggest story of all is the discovery of who the creator of the academy, Dr. Marcel S. Kaboom, really is, and what his motives
truly are.