The Worst Class Trip Ever

School life and school trips are a recurring theme in literature aimed at middle grade readers, especially since these settings exemplify the key conflicts and issues that middle grade readers are navigating. Likewise, the prospect of school field trips introduces the possibility of breaking out of the established scholastic routine and having new experiences. Prominent examples of this narrative structure can be found in works like Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief or Jeff Kinney’s Diaries of a Wimpy Kid series. In both instances, the hero’s planned class trip paves the way to an action-packed adventure. In this context, school trips serve as a narrative pretext to launch the classic structure of the hero’s journey.

In The Worst Class Trip Ever, Wyatt’s adventures take place far from the comfort and familiarity of his home or the supervision of his parents, but the class’s stated aim of exploring museums and historical monuments also gives the narrative a concrete framework. Wyatt first encounters Woltar and Lemi on the plane to Washington, DC, and he returns to his everyday life at the end of the novel, just as the hero of the archetypal hero’s journey embraces new challenges and ultimately returns home.