45 1/2 Excuses for Not Doing Homework product reviews

I have one school aged child, who doesn't really enjoy school work and quite often "forgets" her homework. In fact last term, we had to encourage her to bring her homework home by giving her harder school work to do instead. The last straw meant no screens for the night - that was painful for all of us. So when I saw this book I laughed and cringed a bit about sharing it with my kid.

I showed it to her the other day, and suggested it might be nice light reading during the holidays. She grumbled at me and then looked at the book. Her first comment was about the orientation of the cover. She found it weird to be reading a book that seems like a soft cover novel in landscape rather than portrait. I suggested that we sit together and enjoy the book, because she was too focused on what the book wasn't at that point.

We read the title together and then we looked at the cover art. The bright orange works well with the white font, largely because the white is bold, so it's easy to read. The "kids" lined up at the teacher's desk made my daughter laugh. She commented on all the smelly things in the line and wondered what the book was really going to be about.

As we read the first few pages, she realised that it was more like a joke book. Each two page spread has a descriptive illustration followed by the numbered excuse. There was plenty of "yuck!" and "woah!" said on each page, and many times she was dissolved to tears from laughing so much. She really enjoyed most of the excuses as they got more and more ridiculous.

Her favourite excuse involved dreaming. The boy in the picture is dreaming he has dragon wings that really appealed to her. Her least favourite was when there was a gloppy sneeze involved. She is really not comfortable with sickness or germs, so it made her skin crawl. Before I finished the book, we had visitors arrive. She was very quick to bring the book to them and share her favourite parts with our visitors. This would be a funny book to get someone who is just turning five, to go with their new school bag and lunch box. Though I suspect it will appeal to older kids who get more homework.