SCHOOL DAYS ACCORDING TO HUMPHREY

Humphrey the hamster is back! Summer vacation is over, and it’s a challenge to figure out why the students in Mrs. Brisbane’s Room 26 are not the ones he’s been expecting. As Humphrey investigates the mystery, he manages to influence the well-being of his new community. As Humphrey, narrator William Dufris is enthusiastic about all things school. His voice speeds and slows just as an ordinary hamster speeds and slows on an exercise wheel. Dufris’s lithe transitions between human characters reflect spot-on awareness of academic types and their voices—the authoritative teacher, the nonstop talker, the painfully shy student, and the overly helpful one. The brisk pace of Dufris’s narration moves the school year along. A.R. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2012]