Kipworld

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids. I read and reread the book over and over and it probably inspired several crazy recurring ideas throughout my life. Basically, the story is about a kid named Skinny Malinky who leads a Kid uprising against the teachers. The villain is an ant named Mr. Foreclosure who wants to put them all through the Status Quo Solidifier and turn them all into preps. There’s also this feral girl named Alice who eats a teacher. And a gang of kids called Bookworms who don’t want to fight, just hang out in the sewers and read (I totally identified). So, anyway, I loved that book. I even gave a copy to someone in third grade (they must’ve thought I was weird. Or, um, weirder). Haven’t thought about it in years.

Then, I read this book called Kung Fu High School by Ryan Gattis. It was an OK book, nothing really earth shattering. However, the book really did a good job of conveying this tense mood, this feeling that you’re never really safe and that the man is right around the corner. A feeling you can get in Neal Stephenson’s The Big U. And… in The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids. Thing is, I read the Big U when I was 19, Battle Royale when I was 21 and Kung Fu High School at 25. I read “The War” when I was 8. Imagine the impact on my young psyche…

So, I finished KFHS yesterday and started looking online for “The War” but I couldn’t find it, as I was searching for “the war teachers against students” and coming up with nothing. I even tried plugging in characters names, but I didn’t remember Skinny Malinky, I thought Alice’s name was Janice, and Mr. Foreclosure was Mr. Penulsifer or something. Bleah. Today, I tried again and voila: found it. And a sequel! Ordered both from Amazon… I’m very excited.