Caldecott winner Chris Raschka (Yo! Yes!) tries his hand at writing in this debut novel, flooded with illustrations.  Norman Normann (born to Orman and Norma Normann) is in academic trouble, so his parents hire a tutor, Balthazar Birdsong, to help prepare him for an entrance exam.  This bird-nosed tutor’s first advice is to read the dictionary, one letter at a time.  While sounding like a lazy way out of his job, the words Norman learns surprisingly come in handy in his daily life.

While the silliness of the story was not my humor, middle school readers will probably get a kick out of the outlandish, quirky play on words and bizarre teaching style of Balthazar.