THE OGGLIES GO TO SCHOOL

The Ogglies are back and want to attend school (A Dragon Party for Firebottom, 2016).

Firebottom, their pet dragon, flies them and Oggly-Grandma to school, where the students and their teacher, Mrs. Lucy, don’t blink an eye at their unusual appearance: green skin, huge bulbous noses, and three horns on their heads. In fact, when Mrs. Lucy gets an emergency phone call, she thinks nothing of leaving Oggly-Grandma in charge. With her, the class draws pictures, demonstrates their weightlifting abilities, and flies to the pond to have a mud-splashing contest and learn the mudpuddle song: “We’re gonna have a puddly party, / Gonna make it fine and farty, / Gonna make ourselves all yucky, / Noone’s ever been so mucky.” (The music and lyrics are on the last page.) Firebottom washes and dries the students, and the Ogglies declare that it was so much fun that the whole family will attend the next day. Dietl plays with the concept of a substitute teacher with unconventional ideas about how to teach, and his Ogglies, with their love of stink and garbage and grossness, will certainly appeal to the lowbrow humor of early elementary students. Aside from the Ogglies, there is only one student of color in the class of nine. The lengthy text is rather small (and inexplicably smaller on two pages in particular) and sometimes overlaps the pictures, making it difficult to read.

For fans of the Ogglies only.