Lunch Lady and the Bake Sale Bandit (Lunch Lady, Book 5)

I read this...to make sure it was appropriate for my great nieces and nephews. At first I was a little dubious but re-read and second time and decided there wasn't anything really bad and it was in comic form which would appeal. My goal was to get a 9 and 12 year old interested in reading for the fun of reading. This does the trick. I keep them at my house so the kids have something to read when they're here. It took them two visits to finish one of the books...and the big clue that they were a success was that I didn't have to remind them about the books on the second visit. They started looking for them when they walked in the door.

Thanks Lunch Lady! You did the trick!

My son is an avid reader of intermediate grade and some middle school graphic novels, and I consider the Lunch Lady graphic novels to be the wittiest ones out there. They are laugh-out-loud funny, and they also have something for the adults reading them [example: when a sudden power outage occurs, it shows the English teacher in the dark, being cut off while reading from Edgar Allen Poe's, "The Raven"]. In this one, Lunch Lady and Betty have to figure out who is stealing from the bake sale. There's also some clever digs at the school nutritionista, Mrs. Calahan, who is vehemently anti-sugar. Besides its wittiness and fast-moving, funny plot lines, I like the fact that this series seems to appeal equally to both boys and girls. I like getting these as birthday presents for kids, and they also seem to appeal to reluctant readers, even though some of the language is fairly sophisticated ["My taco is soggy." -- with the reply,"It's considered gourmet." Highly recommended: a fun read.

My son loves this series. He has read the whole series more than once, he is eight. I lent them to his friend who has a type of ADHD and he loved them. His mother loved the fact that he sat down and read the whole book and couldn't wait to read the rest of the series. I have found that sometimes it is hard to get little boys to read, these are comic style, but at least they are getting used to finding entertainment through reading/books vs. electronics

Kids will like the book so get the Lunch Lady series of ten books and save time. We need a second series to keep the kids reading and happy.

A fun book. My fourth grade students love the Lunch Lady books. If you haven't checked it out you should.

The plot of this fifth volume of Jarrett Krosczka's Lunch Lady series is all in the title: Someone has stolen the goodies from the school bake sale, and it's up to Lunch Lady and her sidekick/helper, Betty, to solve the crime, with a bit of help from the three kids known as the Breakfast Bunch.

The story starts out with the Breakfast Bunch escaping the rain by taking the school bus, where they make the acquaintance of Brenda, the meanest bus driver ever. Brenda hates kids because they are noisy and mess up her bus, and she greets everyone except the principal with a snarl.

The bunch next run afoul of Orson, a student safety officer who is a bit too big for his britches. Defying his barked orders, they deliver their baked goods to the cafeteria for the sale before heading to health class, where their teacher delivers a harangue on the evils of sugary foods.

And then disaster strikes: While Lunch Lady and Betty are outside, handling a delivery of taco shells, the power goes out, and when the lights go on again, the bake sale goodies have disappeared.

Part of the charm of these books is that Lunch Lady is the school cafeteria's answer to Maxwell Smart, armed with all sorts of food-related spy gadgets: A spork cell phone, a cookie camera, and so forth. Unfortunately, the more sophisticated gadgets, such as the banana boomerang, the fish-stick nunchucks, and the taco night-vision goggles are missing from this story. Instead, Lunch Lady uses a more conventional surveillance system and motorbike to track down the culprit.

There's a lot to like about the Lunch Lady stories: The Lunch Lady and Betty are funny and larger than life, the plots are a good mix of mystery and action, and the characters reflect a kid's-eye view of school. Adults concerned about nutrition and pedestrian safety might take exception to the characterizations of the health teacher and Orson, but they reflect the general dislike that children have for being told what to do.

Krosoczka's art makes these stories easy to follow. He uses simple, uncluttered panels that focus on the action without excessive backgrounds, and he limits the number of panels on a page to four or fewer. The dialogue is simple too, broken up into short pieces with just one or two word balloons per panel. The books are printed in black and white and yellow, so the palette is limited, but Krosoczka uses strong blacks, whites, and bursts of pure yellow to guide the eye.

Lunch Lady and the Bake Sale Bandit offers a humorous take on grade-school life combined with a cartoony action story--just the sort of thing a bored student might dream up on a rainy day.

-- Brigid Alverson

love this series! arrive quickly and great condition

My third graders love this series.

My third graders love this series.

It could have been better.