The World's Greatest Expert on Absolutely Everything is Crying

ISBN 0440497396 - The greatest negative about this book is the illustrations - and I can't find the illustrator's name anywhere! The girl on the cover looks like a thirty-five year old woman and inside, the black and white illustrations have a creepy dark-eyed Tim Burton/The Corpse Bride kind of look. Jesse's got a boyfriend, Tucker - for about 5 seconds. THEN Katherine Ann joins their class. Katherine Ann's perfect, and if you didn't know that, Katherine Ann would be happy to tell you. She's been everywhere, done everything and is good at it all. Now she's come to Mrs. Chakowski's class and, little by little, even those people who liked her to begin with stop liking her. They give her the cold shoulder or mock her by imitating her superior attitude, hoping to teach her a lesson. As the class plans for their part in "We Are Wonderful Day", celebrating the things they love, Jesse thinks Tucker likes Katherine Ann and she feels insecure, so when he invites Katherine Ann to work on their solar powered doghouse with them, Jesse quits to do, of all things, The Mexican Hat Dance. And who should turn out to be her teacher? Katherine Ann's mother! What Jesse learns from her sessions with Mrs. Franklin, though, has nothing to do with the dance. Maybe Katherine Ann isn't so awful after all... I had to laugh at the Darth Vader reference - it DOES date the book a bit. Still, if there's one thing that never changes, it's kids. They're awful to each other, quick to get even and, once they learn a lesson, just as quick to stick together.