If I Built a School
by Chris Van Dusen
Kirkus Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission. A young visionary describes his ideal school: "Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. / On a scale, 1 to 10, it's more like 15!"In keeping with the self-indulgently fanciful lines of If I Built a Car (2005) and If I Built a House (2012), young Jack outlines in Seussian rhyme a shiny, bright, futuristic facility in which students are swept to open-roofed classes in clear tubes, there are no tests but lots of field trips, and art, music, and science are afterthoughts next to the huge and awesome gym, playground, and lunchroom. A robot and lots of cute puppies (including one in a wheeled cart) greet students at the door, robotically made-to-order lunches range from "PB jelly to squid, lightly seared," and the library's books are all animated popups rather than the "everyday regular" sorts. There are no guards to be seen in the spacious hallwayshardly any adults at all, come to thatand the sparse coed student body features light- and dark-skinned figures in roughly equal numbers, a few with Asian features, and one in a wheelchair. Aside from the lack of restrooms, it seems an idyllic environmentat least for dog-loving children who prefer sports and play over quieter pursuits.An all-day sugar rush, putting the "fun" back into, er, education. (Picture book. 6-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
