Fifth-graders at Beeman Memorial Elementary School were entertained Thursday by a special visitor.
Gloucester native and resident Mark Parisi — creator of the award-winning nationally syndicated “Off the Mark” cartoon which appears in Gloucester Daily Times — visited the fifth-graders to talk about his craft and the new book “The Truth About Fifth Grade,” which he co-authored and illustrated.
“The Truth about Fifth Grade” is Parisi’s fourth book, but his first time collaborating with a co-author, in this case Arizona-based author and teacher Kim Tomsic, aka “Charli.”
The book follows Charli, whose real name is Charlotte, and Alex, the other half of the BFF duo of Charli and Alex, fifth graders whose observations on such fifth-grade dramas as mad crushes, fear of butterflies, lady bugs getting up your nose and blue slurp coming out of it, fill their diaries and the book.
The book examines the perils of fifth grade, an awkward “tween” time when — as Charli says — “Death by embarrassment is not off the table.”