Tom O'Donnell

It's an adventurer's life for Apprentice Mage Albiorix and his four friends (a Paladin, a Thief, a Barbarian, and a Shadow Elf). They earn their living through completing various quests, but once a week, they gather in the back room of a local inn for some light entertainment: a game of Homerooms and Hall Passes. In this game, they take on various roles (the Nerd, the Loner, the Class Clown) and complete various nonadventures at J. A. Dewar Middle School. All well and good, until certain show more peculiar circumstances result in the characters being pulled into their own game. Now, they face challenges that they had never imagined: class elections, using computers for assignments, and worst of all... algebra! How can they escape from this nightmare and return to their own realm?

I found this book delightfully amusing. The characters were great, the pacing kept me reading at a brisk clip, and the premise was just such fun. Recommended for middle-school fantasy enthusiasts, and anyone who's ever rolled for initiative. show less

I have been determinedly working through my tbr pile of middle grade books from last year. Most of them I ended up returning without finishing them. I don't know if I've gotten a run of books that don't please my taste or if I've lost my ability to read middle grade, but they all struck me as too quirky, boring, badly edited, and just not interested. I picked up this title off my pile with a sigh, read the first chapter....

and started laughing uncontrollably. Is this fine literature? No. But show more it's exactly what I needed and, dare I say it, what kids will love.

Sam is just your average, unpopular kid. When a hamster suddenly appears in his class, he quickly whispers his name suggestion, "Hamstersaurus Rex" to his best friend Dylan (she's more popular than he is, even if she does go on and on about disc golf a lot). Then the hamster disappears. The story doesn't end there though - throw in some strange vitamin drink, an overnight mutation powered by junk food, a bully with plans for the world's best (or worst) swirlie, and the Little Mr. (or Miss) Muscles Contest and nothing is certain!

This is just pure funny. Jokes, puns, stereotypical bullies, quirky teachers, and, of course, a mutant hamster, are all dumped into the book for one fast, fun read.There are enough goofy illustrations to please notebook novel fans but not so many that parents will balk at picking up a "graphic novel." The humor is mostly clean and there are good friendships, consequences for behavior, and strong (literally) female characters.

Verdict: Add it just for fun! I'm always pleased to find new hamster books, because of our library hamster, and this is sure to delight fans of Captain Underpants, Andy Griffiths, and anyone who thinks mutant hamsters are awesome.

ISBN: 9780062377548; Published 2016 by Harper Collins; Borrowed from another library in my consortium show less

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from BookCon 2019 and Balzer + Bray in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This is definitely not the type of book I would normally pick up for myself. Even as this ARC has been sneaking closer and closer to the top of my TBR, I’ve found myself dreading it. It’s just so… solidly… not something I would have chosen, based on the cover and the description?

But I gotta be honest, show more y’all. Homerooms and Hall Passes was actually pretty entertaining!

At no point did this book take itself seriously, and thank goodness for that because if this took itself seriously, it would have been intolerable. There were a lot of chuckle moments. Now, right off the bat, Homerooms and Hall Passes is clearly digging on Dungeons & Dragons. I’m not sure if there are any D&D players here, but my experience of this sector of nerd subculture is that there are two dominant types – people who are doing it for fun, and people who take it very seriously. If you find yourself in the second camp, Homerooms and Hall Passes will not be a good fit.

This is definitely a middle grade book. The writing is simple, there are silly meme jokes, and the characters are only as developed as they need to be. I should also mention that the character are stereotypes. This is intentional – they’re all based on typical D&D character classes so, yeah, the thief steals and the barbarian yells and the paladin is very righteous and honest. They’re all good, but don’t expect anything surprising from them. There’s also a good gender balance, which I appreciated.

The plot is a typical good vs. evil quest. Again, nothing really surprising here. The story moves along at a steady pace. This story is really more of a novelty story, with the fun and unique item of flipping D&D upside down and instead having fantasy characters ported into a typical middle school situation.

As far as the characters go, I think Thromdurr was my favorite. As the Barbarian character type, he reminded me of Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy. There were a lot of jokes coming from his character and a lot of really stereotypical angry outbursts… a lot of ALL CAPS moments. But it was fun. Also the Epic Boss Battle at the end was fun.

As far as Homerooms and Hall Passes goes, I’m still not in love with it and a book for me but I think it was well executed for what it was. It was an entertaining read and I think that middle grade readers will find it amusing. show less

Well, that didn't end the way I'd expected it to. Anyway, this is the story of what we would call an alien - named Chorkle and sporting five eyes - dealing with the invasion of actual aliens - that is, earthlings - as they drill into the asteroid where he lives. When a mishap causes the ship to take off, leaving four children behind, Chorkle finds himself in the unenviable position of protecting the children and his people from each other. It's actually quite funny, and Chorkle is a show more delightful narrator. I should pick up the sequel sometime. show less