“I liked ‘Fourth Grade Rats’ by Jerry Spinelli a lot. The book is about a boy named Suds who wished he was still in the third grade, but his friend Joey wanted to be a fourth grade rat. This was the ...

In this peppy prequel to Fourth Grade Rats (1991), Spinelli builds on the childhood rhyme from that novel (“First grade babies!/ Second grade cats!/ Third grade angels!/ Fourth grade rats!”) as George ...