Review Detail

Charlie Bumpers vs. His Big Blabby Mouth

Middle Grade Fiction 170

Career Day Catastrophe

June 12, 2017 (Updated: June 12, 2026)

Overall rating

5.0

Plot

5.0

Characters

N/A

Writing Style

N/A

Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

5.0

Charlie's class is having Career Week, and parents are coming in to talk to students about their jobs. In typical Charlie fashion, our hero contends that his father is practically the president of his company, is a genius with numbers, and will bring in a calculator for everyone in class! He doesn't mean to do this, but it just... happens. When he asks his father to come, he gets a very negative response, so he mounts a campaign to annoy his father into coming. It eventually works, and his teacher is planning on his father coming in. Then, Mr. Bumper's loses his job in an organization restructuring. Charlie is concerned mainly for himself, and bugs his father about looking for work, and also about coming in for Career Week. He's also struggling with job issues of his own-- he is the class messenger for the week, but has a lot of trouble not running in the hallways. Charlie's older brother is aghast at how stupid and uncaring Charlie is being and calls him on it. When Career Week rolls around, Charlie's teacher tells him that something came up and his father couldn't make it... but there is a surprise guest, a wacky mathematician who looks oddly familiar.

Good Points

While Charlie's problems always have a classic feel to them, reminiscent of Carolyn Haywood's Eddie or Cleary's Henry Huggins, he is definitely a modern child who has a lot in common with Burnham's Teddy Mars, and even Big Nate and Greg Heffley. Middle grade readers take a lot of comfort in series books, and the characters in them become like friends.

Charlie is generally a good natured kid, but he makes predictable mistakes, and wants to impress his friends in a very typical 5th grade way. He is more self centered than his little sister (who gets by with cuteness) or his older brother (who understands how difficult things are for the parents), but he is not mean spirited about it. He just doesn't understand. It's encouraging to see that his parents understand this and try to help him grow as a person and learn to be empathetic to others.

This sixth book in the series covers a more serious issue than the other books, but pulls it off in a believable way. I especially enjoyed that Charlie's parents told him age appropriate details about what it meant for the father to be out of work. Matt is becoming my favorite, though-- can we see a slightly older set of books about him?