School Library Journal (Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2017)

Gr 1-4The award-winning team behind Ten Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break if You Want To Survive the School Bus pen another cautionary tale. The same young protagonist who survived the school bus is minding his own business when his bossy friend Ginny gives him strict guidelines on traversing the dreaded cafeteria. The rules are fairly straightforward and hold such time tested tenets as "Don't hold up the line" and "Never aggravate the lunch lady." Since he is reading a book on insects while she lectures him, all of the rules Ginny recite morph into a sort of insect-themed horror story. For instance, sixth graders are as "scary as a swarm of yellow jackets" and the school bully is portrayed as a giant meat-eating water bug. Of course, the boy does everything wrong but still manages to make it through the lunch hour in one piece. He concludes that the best advice is not to listen to Ginny ever again. Filled with engaging and sweeping illustrations done in acrylics, the pictures are engrossing and bring life to an otherwise verbose and confusing tale. The bug rift is intriguing but unfortunately muddles this lengthy and rambling story. VERDICT An optional purchase for those who have a strong fan base for the first book.Amy Nolan, St. Joseph Public Library, MI

Kirkus Reviews

Grandits and Austin team up again to bring readers more school rules that they should (not!) follow.Kyle, who survived breaking all Ten Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break if You Want to Survive the School Bus (2011), is older now—the bespectacled white lad's got new interests, mainly all things insect—but he still worries about following the rules. So when a girl on his bus learns he is buying lunch for the first time (horrors!), he follows her advice and takes notes. Will he manage to survive breaking all seven rules, as is inevitable? While some of these rules will be helpful to the elementary or middle school set navigating the lunchroom, others humorously debunk their what-ifs by showing Kyle surviving the worst. They range from not holding up the line or taking too much to remembering to pay, sitting with your classmates (certainly not with the big kids!), and holding onto your tray. Austin's acrylic, colored pencil, and digital illustrations both wonderfully portray Kyle's every emotion and hysterically show his imagined metaphors: his class is a column of hungry ants, the lunch lady is an easily annoyed fly on the lookout for trouble, and the sixth-grade bully and his friends are carnivorous water bugs. Refreshingly, the book skips the cliché that school lunches are necessarily bad; the food looks appetizing, and Kyle states it's very good. Some solid advice about both the cafeteria and life is embedded in this tongue-in-cheek tale. (Picture book. 5-10)

ALA Booklist (Thu Jun 01 00:00:00 CDT 2017)

In Ten Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want to Survive the School Bus (2011), young Kyle managed to survive his trips on the bus, despite the advice of his older brother. In this sequel, the advice Kyle receives about cafeteria survival comes from a schoolmate but proves to be just as unnecessary as his last experience. Although Kyle breaks all seven rules he's given, he not only survives but, once he gets seated (at the big kids' table, no less), actually enjoys himself. During his various faux pas, Kyle's vivid imagination and vast knowledge of insects merge, causing him to picture the humans as insects and helping to ease his embarrassment. With lengthy text and detailed illustrations, this is intended for a more sophisticated audience than most picture books. The illustrations are particularly effective, artfully transforming various characters into insects in such a way that even the grossest (meat-eating water bugs!) become appealing. Viewers learn along with Kyle that anxiety-inducing situations aren't always what they seem.