The Wrong Answer Book

Overnight, the school hallways have been replaced with trampolines. The principal is calling it an adjustment period.

54 situations like that, in a school where the intercom has started making its own announcements, a new sport has been explained twice and nobody will admit they don't understand it, and your candy bar has been trying to get your attention since Tuesday. Every one of them is reported completely straight by the people in charge, and every one of them is missing its funniest part. The kid supplies it.

The Wrong Answer Book is a joke-and-story invention game for kids 9 to 12. Slapstick and deadpan hold hands on every page. Every situation has three quick ways in, and then a deep end. Say it, draw it, or write it. One word is a real answer. So is four pages. A few answers are already on the page, already wrong, already funny, so starting is never the hard part. There are no wrong answers.

Inside:

· 54 situations, from Food Mutiny to Broken Science to Time Trouble

· Three doors into each one, and a deep end

· A draw space on every situation

· Twenty-two dares that send the kid off the page, like apologizing to a backpack where someone can hear

· Nine story starters

· Fake forms, meeting minutes, a unit test returned by a black hole, a tardy slip

· A guide to fifteen imagination moves at the back. They work anywhere.

Out loud. Works alone or with whoever is in the room: at school, at the dinner table, in the car. If somebody else is answering too, it's technically a competition. Answer together and the answers get worse, which is the whole idea.

For teachers: five-minute warm-ups before a writing lesson, and every situation works as a story starter.

The present for the funny one. Birthdays, holidays, long drives. For the kid who read Wayside School and wanted to be in it.

There are no right answers here. Some wrong answers are, however, significantly more interesting than others.