Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute

By Jarrett J. Krosoczka
Knopf Books for Young Readers, $5.99, 96 pages

Lunch Lady, a secret agent, is serving justice and lunch at the Thompson Brook School. In this book, our heroine investigates the sudden and mysterious absence of a teacher and fights a robot disguised as a substitute who has other evil cyborg minions that plan to grab the Teacher of the Year award with their terrible and offensive plans. Lunch Lady partners with Betty, another lunch lady who works at the same school and acts as her side kick. Betty is in charge of creating gadgets and is wonderful at doing so, since they all look like regular kitchen utensils. For example, she made a Spatu-copter, which is a spatula that is able to make you fly when you hold on to it. I also loved the lunch tray lap top. I honestly wish I could have something like that in school. Lunch Lady and Betty have a secret hideout behind the refrigerator and that’s where they keep all their spy contraptions. They only go there when class is in session. Lunch Lady makes sure that she always wears her super hero costume to keep her identity a secret. As Lunch Lady and Betty fight evil subs and teachers, Hector, Dee and Terrence join and fight along with them. These three students are known as the Breakfast Bunch and they always get picked on by the school Bully, Milmoe, until Lunch Lady put a stop to it.

Children who are into action and comics should read this book, because the pages are full of animated and exciting drawings. There is also a moral story in here about standing up for yourself when you are being bullied by other kids. I recommend this book because I enjoyed it very much and I don’t think I will ever look at our school Lunch Lady the same way again.

Reviewed by Amber Guno Cloutman