Help! I’m Trapped in the First Day of School

Hello, Spongey here.

I think it’s about time to do a random book review. I wish I could do more but there’s only so much room so I guess there’s always Goodreads for what I can fit in reading wise. I keep thinking I’ve brought every book series I was into as a kid but I keep finding more I hadn’t mentioned before.

Today we have one I’ve been wanting to look at for ages. Seriously, I feel like I wanted to do one back in the earlier days of the blog but never got around to it. I’m glad I waited as that means the review will actually be good. Anyway, the series in question is the “Help! I’m Trapped in” series. Every title is “Help! I’m Trapped in __’s body” typically, which makes it hard to name overall.

The author is Todd Strasser, who has been writing books since at least 1978. This is arguably his best known work but he has a bit of random hits as well. He’s still writing to this day if his website if any indication. He also did some YA horror under the name “T.S. Rue”. I can’t say I’m familiar with his works outside of this though. Still, plenty to respect, including the Home Alone 2 novelization.

This series has 17 entries from 1993 to 2001, with usually about one a year with more per year as it went on. They aren’t numbered so despite having the same cast it’s not super tightly knit it seems. The first was called “Help! I’m Trapped in My Teacher’s Body” and it was roughly what the title suggests. A teacher creates a machine meant to transfer information or something like but it ends up switching bodies. It seems like it meant as a stand alone but of course there were tons more as the characters swap bodies with everyone from the gym teacher to a dog.

Of course, there’s only so many options so eventually they got more out there, with aliens and vampires. Weirdly I never read the first one as a kid so I don’t know totally how the start fared. I have strong memories from certain entries, especially the Alien one due to an interesting twist. I haven’t come back to them since so I don’t know how they generally hold up.

I thought it’d be fun to revisit the series and I picked one I remember pretty fondly. This is a bit different though. This was the second book, and I feel like Todd wanted to do something if he was gonna do a follow up. So instead this is a groundhog day story. Oh this will be fun. But after this it was mostly body swap stuff again as I suppose that formula did better.

This type did come back later on for “Help! I’m Trapped in the first day of Summer Camp!” which I recall being pretty wild with the ending. But let’s focus on this outing for now. And yes, a certain Mr. Stine did do this idea too way later, doubt it was inspired by it though. An additional thing before we begin: On Todd’s website there was a contact page with an email, and I was pretty curious on the background of the series…so I did my thing and emailed him nicely asking.

And he responded. Here is that response:

Well, that’s cool to find out. I don’t much to say that, it’s roughly what I expected. I was sure it was possible that the series may have been about other adventures besides just the one type but ah well.

Anyway, does this one hold up to my memories? Let’s find out.

This, is Help! I’m Trapped in the First Day of School

The artist is not credited but this cover is okay. The other covers in the series are more memorable though. It’s just Jake screaming at time I guess. Decently eye catching but nothing super special. That tagline doesn’t help the comparisons to the Stine book though.

The book opens with our protagonist Jake Sherman waking up from a dream about a groundhog named Bill. I see we’ve got a lot of subtlety already. Cheeky references aside, he gets up and meets up with his older sister Jessica. Over the summer, she has gone from your “average pain in the butt big sister” to a “super pain in the butt PC big sister”. Wait, what?

“PC stood for politically correct, which basically meant she become a vegetarian, was into a million dumb causes, and always took the side of the underdog. …To me PC, stood for Pea-brained Cretin”

Oh no. I already know what Jake’s gonna grow up to be and it ain’t pretty. Moving past that, she tells Jake he’s been a bit of a jerk lately, ever since he started hanging out with a kid named Alex Silver. He’s even stopped hanging out with his main friends Andy Kent and Josh Hopka as much.

Jake and Alex are starting 8th grade and plan to wedgie a bunch of 6th graders, because that’s what is expected of 8th graders, they even had to deal with that themselves. I recall this being a character growth story, so I’ll let it play out before pulling out the “our hero” comments.

Jake meets up with Alex at the bus stop. Oh and he sees a fire truck going by, but I’m sure that’s not important for later. Alex immediately takes to bullying the other kids that are there, with some talk of them being the knights of wedgie or whatever.

One new kid named Ollie doesn’t know what a wedgie is, and even I have to question that. He’s from Ohio, guess that haven’t been invented there yet. Alex then forces him to run around the block, and thankfully there are no adults present to see this. He ends up not being there for the bus, and to his credit, Jake thinks that’s cruel.

At school, Ollie manages to arrive on foot. He tells Alex what his homeroom is, and Alex gives him the wrong directions so he’ll run all over school. Jake loses points by finding it funny. They go to their homeroom, taught by Mrs. Rogers. She was a teacher in the first book who hooked up with the titular teacher. Here she even announces their marriage. Not engagement, she says they tied the knot. Geez, that was fast, but maybe that book explained it.

She goes into a thing about how 6th graders should be treated, which Alex naturally ignores. A girl named Amber Sweeny comes in, and everyone immediately starts being horny. Lovely. Everyone is jealous when she sits next to Jake.

After class, Mrs. Rogers has Jake stay behind a bit to briefly express her concerns about how Jake has changed. She suggests he find a new friend, so she’s now the best character. At lunch, he meets up with Andy and Josh. I can’t tell much about their individual characters here, I guess it’s more clear in the others.

There’s a whole thing about the school’s bad cheeseburgers, which is another excuse for Alex to be a dick but this time Jake gets hit too. I feel like he should already tell he should ditch Alex but it’s only page 26. Next is science with Mr. Dirksen, the teacher Jake needed help due to being trapped in the body of.

Not much of note here, just neat to catch up with things from the first one. After that, they find Ollie out in the hallway, and Alex shoves him into the girl’s bathroom. He truly is the classiest character ever. Thankfully Ollie is saved by Amber, who tells them to grow up. Wah wah, guess you’re not getting her after all. At least their awfulness is balanced out with this, it’s the earliest steps in showing Jake he needs to ditch Alex.

Later at home, the firetruck thing gets its payoff as Jessica tells Jake that there was a fire elsewhere that burned down the house of a family that just moved on, because someone forgot to turn off the toaster oven. Geez, that’s terrible luck right there.

“Wow, cool. Wanna go there after dinner and take a look?”

“What happened to you?”

“I don’t know, what?”

“When did you become to kind of person of the person who thinks it’s cool when someone’s house burns down?’

Okay, there’s becoming worse due to Alex, then there’s that. Yikes. Also, that typo, with the random “to”, wasn’t me. It’s in the book. Whoops. That concludes the day, and we cut to the “next” morning. Yeah, let’s cut to the chase, the loop begins here, let’s see how long it takes to hit Jake.

He’s woken up by his alarm, which sadly isn’t playing “I Got You Babe”. He notices they have a new box of Pop-Tarts to open, when they already opened a new box “yesterday”. Clearly that is the pressing thing to start with, Jessica tells him it’s the first day of school and he’s super confused.

He goes to the bus stop, where everyone is saying the same things as before. Things continue like this, and Jake is dazed through most of it. Thankfully, the fact that he doesn’t have to do the same things hit him soon after Amber arrives. He doesn’t get to actually do anything yet though because he doesn’t want to make it clear to anyone that he’s been through this before. That’s only the case if you say spout things you shouldn’t know yet, like say congratulating Mrs. Rogers before she announces the marriage. Otherwise you’re fine.

So the rest of the day goes on as it did, and we move on to the next loop. To his credit, he thinks he’s possibly still in the loop and quickly checks with Jessica, who confirms it’s still the first day of school.

“I was trapped in the first day of school!”

So close!

Jake tells her what is going on, and she kinda buys it, mostly since it’s no weirder than switching bodies, which she was there for. Well okay, she may not fully get it, but she’s at least humoring him and not being a jerk. He proves it by correctly noting that Ollie will show up at the bus stop first, and the firetruck will be heard. She’s weirded out and checking his head for a fever or something but again, not going full “you’re crazy”.

Things go on as normal until lunch where he makes sure Andy and he don’t eat the bad cheese burgers. He also annoys Alex a few times, so he’s starting to get good use of looping at least. He even stops Alex from pushing Ollie into the girl’s room, so he gets a smile from Amber instead. So he’s already developed into being better, guess we’re done?

Also, Mr. Dirksin pulled a test on them to test their general knowledge to get an idea of what they need to work on, it won’t count for their grade. Now Jake is gonna study so he impress him by acing it. So he’s counting on the loop going on and in the next chapter, we are indeed at First day number four.

They note the day number at the start of each loop, so you can skip ahead to the last chapter and know how many loops are left. Not saying how many to keep you all in suspense. Things stay the same until Jake decides to be more direct with Amber, and they it off pretty well. He’s able to get to her at lunch faster as he brought something from home to avoid the burgers.

He’s just pleasant enough with her for this to not be too creepy. He gets to know her better, and she goes on about what it’s been like in a new place and yada yada. Alex comes over to be a dick but that ends when he eats the nasty cheerburger, nice. For some reason, Jake lets Ollie get forced into the girl’s bathroom but this time he steps away so Amber only sees Alex.

Not sure if it’s worth embarrassing this kid just to get laid but whatever. That’s only kinda a joke, Alex said that’s a chance Jake could get her to this hill that’s known as a makeout spot. Lovely. After school they do get to have a little date, and drop by a CD shop as our first true 90’s-ism.

It goes well and at home Jessica starts grilling him. See, that morning he told her all the stuff he knew was gonna happen but she wrote it off. Now she knows of it happening and wants to know how he knows. She even weirdly accuses him of arson which is just rude. Speaking of the fire, how have they not heard whispers of which house it was? Spoilers, it’ll be important.

The “next” morning, Jake skips the bus and takes a ride from Jessica instead, so he can some things that he learned Amber likes. In my first attempt at that sentence, I typed Jessica by accident in that latter part. If you think that’s gross, spoilers, he gets a ride in her body down the line.

He stops Ollie from running ragged looking for his homeroom. During lunch, he tries to get chummy with Andy and Josh again, because they still exist. It almost works but they start to get a smug aura from Jake. See, he bets Alex 10 bucks he could get Amber to that hill later the day, and they heard of it. I see even when sticking it to Alex, he’s still just off enough to need further developing.

Next, when Alex puts Ollie in the girl’s room, Jake forces him to let him out and Amber is impressed. I’m switching between finding this fine enough and rightfully iffy. It’s not horrible, but maybe that one Twilight Zone 2019 episode just made me leery of using time loops to know girls better.

Jake also bets his friends that Dirksen will pull a test on them, which is going a step too far. Thankfully, he does feel bad afterwards. After school, they do the date and this time he gets her to the park, with the hill nearby. Nothing notable happens there, bit of a letdown. It goes well but after, Jake finally feels bad about using Amber, even if Alex tells him he’s a legend now,

“I tried to smile, but somehow I didn’t feel like a legend”

This is also where he starts getting tired of looping. It’s only a mater of time before we get a toaster in bathtub. Is that a dark reference to make with a kids book? Entering day six, he doesn’t wanna get out of bed because there won’t be a tomorrow and all that. Then something hits him.

Amber said she lived on Walnut Street, which is only a few blocks away. If a few blocks away sounds familiar, that’s because yep, that’s where the burned down is supposed to be. He think Amber is the one who lost her house. Eh, if that was true, she would have known about it and said something. The firetruck is heard in the morning at that evening if just when Jessica told Jake about it. That means it was in progress during school, and even in a pre cell phone age, Amber had to have been contacted at some point.

I’ll assume it’s mean to burn down by the evening, since that lines up better even with the full confirmation later on. Anyway, he runs to her house to stop the fire. He talks to Amber’s dad on his way house but he doesn’t listen. Usually it would be “adult in a kids thing” syndrome but he says they don’t even have a toaster oven so there’s nothing to turn off. So now Jake is the one who not listening even though I think Mr. Sweeny should know what their house has.

They hear the firetruck, confirming it isn’t Amber’s house burning down. He follows the fire truck to the burning house, and no one around knows who lives there, which sure is convenient for not revealing who’s it is. No one is home so maybe I can buy people not being able to find a contact for the people there for a while. Either way, Jake has to go to his sixth first day of school.

At the bus stop, he tells Alex he no longer wants to be a knight of wedgie, and stops him from doing all that stuff he does to Ollie. I’m hoping for a bigger moment against Alex but still, development is kicking in. He befriends Ollie and this time helps out his friends with the test. They start to bond together like old times, and Jake is finally letting go of Alex.

Also, he stops the girl’s bathroom thing and actually avoids eye contact when Amber comes out, showing he is now doing this to be good and not for for approval. Kind of a small and good way to show the development I guess. Things start to go back to normal for Jake.

He takes the bus on the way home and talks with Ollie some more. He opens up about being the new kid, and really what happens next should have hit you already. Things sound familiar, so Jake bits and Ollie mentions a toaster oven. Dun dun dun, his house is the one on fire.

This is one of the things I recalled so I saw it as obvious but for what it is, it’s not a terrible misdirect. It’s just from an adult view point, you realize it makes more sense for it to be the new kid who had faded into the background and needs to be important to justify being focused on early on. Anyway, it’s too late/early to do anything about it and Ollie gets a shock when they arrive at his house to see it burned down.

He says his parents went to the city on business and at the moment there’s no way to contact them, so that excuses my attempt at nitpicking. He stays at Jake’s house for a while until his parents pick home up. Things are pretty sad but we cut to day seven, so now Jake can fix it. He runs to Ollie’s house and comes up with some BS about being an 8th grade helper and gets him to turn off the toaster oven.

With that crisis averted, the day goes well. He ditches Alex, protects Ollie, is nice to Amber without going too far, helps his friends and yada ayada. Not much to report on beyond an amusing moment where him being nice to Jessica weird her out. Then we get the next morning and he thinks it’s time to do it again.

But when he goes to Ollie’s, his mom is there and remarks on how Jake is here again. Yep, it is finally the next morning, and the loop is broken. Then he remembers he’s still wearing the same clothes and has to change, hah. He goes home to do that, and Jessica asks how many mornings his weird behavior is gonna go on for.

“You know what? I think it’s finally over!”

The End. Not too bad, but I wish got more of an ending to show his growth more. Maybe something with Andy and Josh or something, this feels just a bit too abrupt. Ah well.

Final Thoughts:

I have strong nostalgia for this book, to the point where I recalled most things in it pretty well. Thus, it’s actually a bit hard to separate my feelings from it at least somewhat. That aside, I still like it well enough. It’s got flaws but I do think it’s generally a decently put together story. It follows the Groundhog Day formula pretty tightly and reasonably well.

However, that can make it typical, as it does follow that tightly and mostly does what you’d expect. This is before they really started experimenting with this formula though, so maybe it can be forgiven. It can just make some parts a bit dull.

Another hurdle would be Jake here. Sure, there’s development but it could have hit a bit harder and some early parts can still be a bit much. It wasn’t too bad for me by the end but it could have been better. The Amber section can be mixed for that reason, it’s one of those things that works for the overall story more than in the moment.

The story as a whole is actually pretty well constructed, and that’s the best part of it. First, I liked how the firetruck is just a throwaway thing at first that becomes vital to the whole thing. The story becomes about Jake having to ditch this toxic friend and help out Ollie, so it makes sense that saving his house from burning down ends the loop.

It shows how he’s grown that way, and I think that’s done well. The Amber part works for the story because he realizes he was just doing it to stick it to Alex and it’s a bit off to use the loop like this, so the fake out works on that sort of deeper level. As obvious as it is that it’s Ollie. Jake at least has a motivation in the sense that he thinks he has to do 6th graders what 8th graders did to him and all that.

He realizes that isn’t the case and I think the development mostly works. It could have been better in some places, but as basic as it is, it’s not too bad. I can’t judge it as a followup to the first book but as it is, it works fine.

It’s fairly standard for what you’d expect, but overall this book was decently put together. It’s a bit dry and mixed in some respects, but it has a solidly told story with decent development. It’s basic but it’s a fine read. Maybe not one to rush to read if you didn’t grow up with it, but it’s still fine all things considered.

I don’t know how well the others in the series hold up overall, but this one was fine.

Rating: Good

Not the highest good ever, but there’s enough to appreciate to get that rating. I wasn’t sure where it would land but sure, here it is. I enjoy these misc book reviews, hopefully I can do more. i do want to stick with ones I have either a connection with or warrant it, given I have other places to just talk about whatever. Maybe I’ll even tackle this series again. That Alien one is really something from what I recall. Either way, this was fun to revisit. And thanks to Todd for the reply.

See ya.