Summer Reading is Killing Me! (Time Warp Trio, No. 7)

Description

Everyone’s favorite time-travelers are changing their styles!  The Time Warp Trio series now features a brand-new, eye-catching design, sure to appeal to longtime fans, and those new to Jon Scieszka’s wacky brand of humor.Sam, Fred, and Joe--the Time Warp Trio--find themselves face-to-beak with a giant, 266-pound chicken ... who, unfortunately, looks hungry. As the chicken begins to chase them, the boys realize with horror that they are smack-dab in the middle of Daniel Pinkwater s The Hoboken Chicken Emergency! How did they get there? Fred accidentally stuck the school s summer reading list between the pages of "The Book"--a time-warping, green-mist-expelling book that triggers time travel in all of Jon Scieszka s well-loved Time Warp Trio action-adventures.

In Summer Reading Is Killing Me!, illustrated by innovative artist Lane Smith, the boys find themselves trapped in a dreadfully skewed literary world where Joe, the narrator, says "I saw Homer Price being carried by the Headless Horseman. Dracula was dragging Winnie the Pooh in a headlock. Mr. Twit was breaking Harold s Purple Crayon." It becomes the boys charge to find "The Book" and yank the summer reading list out of it before children s literature is destroyed forever as the "bad" characters knock off the "good" characters and take over the stories. The literary references accelerate to a breakneck pace: "We stepped over a very hungry caterpillar eating his way through a dictionary.... We made our way through a crowd of Robinson Crusoe, a blue moose, Julie with some wolves, a snowman, a plain and tall lady named Sarah, a kid with a hatchet, and a very confused-looking Robin Hood helping Eeyore reattach his tail." Whether or not young readers register every literary allusion is inconsequential--Summer Reading Is Killing Me! is a rollicking, sarcastic, ultraweird, suspenseful adventure that kids will like regardless. And for teachers, parents, and librarians who are deeply enmeshed in kid-erature--it s purely delicious. (Ages 8 and older) --Karin Snelson