As if Mondays aren't bad enough, A.J.'s bus gets a flat tire and his bus driver Mrs. Kormel gets everyone lost in the middle of nowhere.

When a bus driver takes a break from his route, a very unlikely volunteer springs up to take his place, a pigeon! This is an unflinching and hilarious look at a child's potential for mischief. In a plain palette, with childishly elemental line drawings, the author has captured the essence of unreasonableness in the very young.

Cheaney's novel opens with a bus accident on a torrentially rainy night and the promise that one character will be famous by book's end; she then rewinds nine months with news of a robbery in the sleepy Hidden Acres subdivision. But these early tinges of suspense wind up being peripheral as the novel unfolds. Over nine months, Cheaney (My Friend the Enemy) follows the stories of nine characters, fourth through seventh graders, who ride Mrs. B's school...

Maisy the mouse picks up an assortment of passengers as she drives her bus.

When their regular bus driver gets sick, Warren, Louise, and the other bus riders must endure a string of substitute drivers.

When Cheech drives his school bus through a graveyard, he picks up some unusual students there who teach him, and his "Cheecharrones," a lesson about making friends.