Werewolf Bram is back for his third adventure at the Villains Academy, where he and his classmates are learning to be bad.
In this volume, Bram and friends Sheila the ghost, Bryan the Lion, Skeletony (“Tony”), and Mona the elf-witch—the self-proclaimed “Weirdoughs”—are preparing for the Gruesome Games, “basically a field day for villains.” But other teams of schoolmates are also competing to win and have their names written into the Book of Bad—and even worse, all of their parents are invited to attend. Bram is worried about proving himself to his two dads, especially since his papa Percevil’s team had won the Gruesome Games when they were students. The stakes are high for Tony, too; his dad will take Tony out of the school if his son’s team doesn’t win—and his dad is Grimm, the Master of Death, who never changes his mind.
With the school’s ghostly founders looking on, the Weirdoughs take on the other teams. But can Bram be bad enough to win in a game with no rules?
Don’t worry, the story isn’t as macabre as it might seem. It’s all very tongue-in-cheek and age appropriate. As with the first and second volumes of this chapter book series, there’s a lot of silliness here. Bram is an engaging protagonist with a penchant for woolly sweaters (just like his dads, it turns out). Other characters are each a little over the top in the best of ways, and we also get a sweet glimpse at how Bram’s dads’ relationship started, back when they were both students.
Author/illustrator Ryan Hammond’s sketches of the action add fun to the volume, although it is not as fully illustrated as a picture book.
There’s a whiff of that other magic-school series in this one, but delightfully turned on its head, more queer-inclusive, and geared to a younger audience. Light lessons about friendship, finding one’s community, and following one’s own path are balanced with fart jokes to create a story that should please both newly independent readers and their adults.
The publisher is calling this a middle grade book, but I really see it as a chapter book (it’s a very early middle grade title, if that), so I’m tagging it as both.
