The first day of middle school as a new student is bad enough. But what if you had to relive it over and over again? That's the premise of R.L. Stine's (Goosebumps) latest horror novel. He packs in plenty of humor, too, with poor 11-year-old Artie Howard besieged by his ravenous pooch and five-year-old brother Eddy, who can do no wrong in their mother's eyes. Artie falls out of bed with his alarm, struggles to pick out just the right outfit, only to have Eddy squeeze syrup into his hair with not a spare moment to shower. A truck plows into a puddle, soaking Artie in just the right places to make it look as though he's peed in his jeans. Could it get any worse? In a word: yes. Artie makes an enemy of the most popular guy in school (a football star, naturally), and other subthemes involve an African scorpion, a psycho principal and the book room monitor, Mr. Blister, who may be homicidal (Mr. Blister's face had "so many chins, it looked like a candle melting onto his shirt").
Stine milks the worst-case scenarios, and the replays of Day One turn out even more agonizing for Artie's attempts to avoid the events from the previous time around. Just when you thought middle school couldn't get any worse, Artie finds a way to prove you wrong. This back-to-school caper will make tweens feel that they just don't have it that bad. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness