The Unlucky Lottery Winners of Classroom 13

June 5, 2017
After perennially unlucky teacher Linda LaCrosse’s lottery ticket nets her $28 billion, she splits her winnings with her class, per a contract they signed. In the subsequent chapters, the authors cheekily explore how the children use their enormous windfalls: Emma Embry buys “every cat in the state” and moves to an island with them (too bad she’s allergic), popular Jayden Jason James clones himself, and class hamster Earl shreds and pees on his check. Keeping the dozens of students straight isn’t particularly easy but neither is it the point: these brief and funny fantasies revel in the tantalizing possibilities of insta-wealth. Final art not seen by PW. Ages 6–10. Illustrator’s agency: Bright Agency.

April 15, 2017
What would you do if you won the lottery?Ms. Linda LaCrosse is a very unlucky person. She puts too much milk on her toast and too much butter in her coffee. She is the teacher in Classroom 13, with 27 students. On this particularly unlucky Wednesday, she decides to use a lottery ticket to spice up her math lessons and promises to split her earnings evenly with every single student. The prize for this lottery is $28 billion. And Ms. Linda is the only winner. In a sure storyteller's voice, the remaining chapters of the book relate the misfortunes the students experience after claiming their billion-dollar prizes. Lily Lin, who has always wanted to be an astronaut, buys NASA. Dev hires the best video game designers so he can live in a virtual-reality world. Ximena brings the wonders of the world to her ailing grandmother. Though each idea seems appealing, there's a catch. The diverse cast, including kids with disabilities, is appreciated, although stereotypes do appear. Dreidemy's absurd and cheeky illustrations depict the myriad ways that money does not buy happiness. The short, easy-to-read chapters and wry humor will appeal to fans of Captain Underpants and Wayside School. As this is but the first in a series, this interesting classroom of characters will soon meet another unlucky fate in the next book. The ongoing hardships of Classroom 13 hammer home teachable moments with humor. (Fiction. 8-12)

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February 1, 2017

Gr 2-4-Twenty-eight billion dollars seems like a ridiculous amount of money to win and spend. When unusually unlucky teacher Linda LaCrosse wins the lottery and agrees to share the winnings with her students, one would think her luck was about to change for the better-except it doesn't. Told in short chapters, with each one devoted to a winner, the story of how the characters spend their wealth gets more outrageous as the plot progresses. From buying all the cats in the state to accidentally freeing the money in a hot-air balloon, most of the kids somehow manage to burn through their cash rather quickly and rather unluckily. Even the class hamster is in on the action. Elementary schoolers will find the humor in each situation, though it may not give them a strong grasp of how much a billion dollars is really worth.

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