Outskirts Press, INC.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL This year I am six years old. My parents are delighted. Today is my first day of school, But they’re the ones excited. They’re dancing around the kitchen, And I would like to know: Are they happy school is starting, Or just glad to see me go?

So begins this collection of witty, whimsical verse that anyone who ever covertly shot a spitball in class will love. The quirky teachers, bizarre events and embarrassing mishaps of Roby School are all wonderfully captured here with only one purpose in mind: to make children laugh and adults giggle. And they do. Chartier’s tidy poems bring back the days when reading poetry was fun. “My First A,” “Toilet Problems,” “Mean Mrs. Green” and “Ode to a Substitute” are just some of the poems that trigger universal memories of those odd daily events in an elementary school that sometimes seemed only to have been designed to baffle young, otherwise uncomplicated minds. Karen Gosselin’s line drawings provide a perfect and delightful running narrative of their own for each of the amusing “educational” moments captured so richly here by Chartier in Roby School.