Community Activity:Rank the Chapters - Big Nate Strikes Again

After all that fun ranking the chapters of the first Big Nate book, it's time to do the same for the second, Big Nate Strikes Again!

There WILL be spoilers around, so if you haven't read it yet and you ended up getting spoiled, you have only yourself to blame.

Ned Dickens ranking (as an example)
Chapter 9 (the best) - This one is my favorite chapter. Why, you may ask? It's fun to read, that's why! The first half of it is a little magazine-like thing called "Poor Nate's Almanack", inspired by "Poor Richard's Almanack", written by Ben Franklin, the main topic of Nate's research paper project. One of my favorite recent Big Nate characters, Dee Dee makes her first ever appearance, albeit drawn by Nate in the Almanack. I also found the Dr. Cesspool comic and "Today's Riddle" really funny. Randy gets a rare (but should be common) detention for running in the hall, to add insult to his nose injury caused by the running.

Chapter 12 - Once again, the second-best chapter for me happened to be the last (and shortest) one. Once again, the endings I love the best are the happy ones after a bit of dismay. Nate writes a final article for his Almanack about his fleeceball team's victory. A small argument between Nate and Gina leads to the latter screaming at the former, which causes Gina to get her first detention for screaming in the library. Nate concludes the story that he and Ben Franklin have a lot in common and would get along well.

Chapter 1 - And now the third-best chapter for me is the first! I said that the beginning isn't normally good, but an exception is made here. I think what really started the funniness when Teddy points out "the ugliest baby" in the Guess That Baby bulletin board, unaware that it's Nate's baby picture. Nate thought a picture of a cute baby girl was Jenny, but it turned out to be Gina's baby picture. THAT was funny. However, Teddy and Francis teasing Nate about it is the one thing I can't stand. NO MORE OF THOSE RUMORS!!!

Chapter 6 - This one's pretty good, despite a few of Nate's problems. Chad warns Nate about Randy, but Nate isn't worried because of the school yard safety policy. However, because the apathetic Coach John was on monitor duty, Nate's chase from Randy was on, until Principal Nichols stops them and sends Randy away after Nate gets a Ben Franklin question right. Speaking of Ben Franklin, I like how he tricked someone into getting zapped by lightning to discover electricity. Later, Nate realizes that he forgot to suggest his team name idea to Coach Calhoun and is horrified that Gina, who's in the team, has her name suggestion accepted, "Kuddle Kittens".

Chapter 5 - So you might be wondering, "What is Nate's team name suggestion that didn't get accepted?" You'll find out soon here. For now, here's a throwback to one of Nate's baseball team's embarrassing food sponsors, Joe's Hot Dogs. Of course, his sister Ellen is around, passing the phone to Nate saying that it's a girl (he thought it was Jenny, but it was Gina, that was funny) and then bragging about her success in 6th grade. Spitsy's psychotic dog barking gave Nate the perfect team name idea, "Psycho Dogs".

Chapter 2 - This one's more average. While the beginning wasn't too interesting, of all parts of the book, that caused a complaint from a Karen mother about the book being "rude" and "evil", for what, frowning?! You can't expect everyone to smile and be polite, lady, chill! Anyway, two characters mentioned in Book 1 were hinted again in "Worst Project Partners", Nick Blonsky and Kim Cressly, along with new character Mark Cheswick. Nate's project partner nightmare comes true when he's paired up with Gina.

Chapter 7 - OK, so back to the "Kuddle Kittens" situation, Nate's so mad that he ordered a plateful of egg salad so he could dump it on Gina. But then he trips and instead accidentally dumps it on his crush Jenny, who went ballistic. She's quite the overreactor, but how else would you react if you're the victim of an unintentional humiliation ritual? Her boyfriend Artur joins Nate and his friends in a scribble game and does an impressive scribble in two minutes. Artur is also in Becky's team, the Killer Bees, who's facing off against the Kuddle Kittens, Nate's team that Gina named after her stuffed cat toy. The action is on! Who would win??

Chapter 8 - The next chapter is where the quality slightly downgrades. As it turns out, the first game ended disastrously when Gina distracted Nate by turning on her cat toy, ruining his chance of glory and leaving him furious and disgruntled. Later at Nate's home, Gina showed her project work to Nate, and he showed his, filled with cool drawings of Ben Franklin, which Gina didn't approve of, starting an argument that ended with a deal that she submit the work and quit the fleeceball team.

Chapter 10 - This chapter is also slightly worse, despite the balance of ups and downs. It is a big day for Nate; both the turning of his and Gina's project and the fleeceball championship game. Gina hands it in, but she used 3rd-party sources when she should've created her own, and that could result in a big fat F. Luckily, Nate saved her (and his) grade with his comics because Ben Franklin was a cartoonist, which made drawings appropriate for the project. So that's a nice victory, but sadly the story's not over...

Chapter 3 - Well now we're back to where it all began. Gina sternly lets Nate know that grades are her life and that they're doing the project on Ben Franklin. We also learn more about Nate's school sporting career, fleeceball, and Nate's goal to win a sports trophy, with him being the team captain stirring up a great chance. However, he has competition with another team captain, Randy. Nate punks him by unleashing the signature locker avalanche, which Principal Nichols orders Randy to clean up after Nate walks away.

Chapter 4 - Then it gets worse in quality and Nate's slight fears. He has to look out for Randy who plans to have revenge. After having a bit of fun in science, Mr. Galvin, who didn't appreciate that, sends Nate to the library with a warning to visit him at the end of the day. Nate uses the opportunity to learn cool stuff about Ben Franklin. During Mr. Galvin's lecture, Nate realizes that he's missing the captain's meeting to pick team players, so he frantically apologizes and rushes to the gym, where Coach Calhoun already picked the players, including (gasp!) Gina. That's not too good...

Chapter 11 (the worst) - Yeah, you heard me, this is my least favorite chapter here! Nate had to suffer the torture of waiting so long for the second big event, the fleeceball championship, until the big game finally arrived. Gina uses a food poisoning excuse to get out of the game, which made total sense because of moldy meat loaf served for lunch that day. Randy, who's in the process of recovering from his nose injury, is at his most beef-jerky side, gloating when scoring a home-run and slams his foot on Nate's, hard and painful. That meant Nate had to be benched, and Gina takes over, much to his dismay. Despite being bad at the game, she scores the winning home-run. What I didn't like was how Nate wasn't grateful for the victory, like that comic where he was outraged when Gina got her credit for helping Nate pass his social studies final (HELLO!? Nate could've ended up in summer school and missed out on a chase for a girlfriend!). Maybe that complaining lady is right, Nate should be more polite to even an arch-enemy like Gina.

Conclusion: Despite all the ups and downs I had to go through this book, I had fun reading it, and I recommend this book, along with Book 1, to anyone (except oversensitive parents of course). All in all, my total rating for this book is 80% (4 out of 5 stars).

Now it's your turn! Add your name and your rankings below.

Aeether
So, uh, I can't remember reading much of the book but I do remember the almanack was a great chapter. Sorry for the short review.