Saturday, April 30, 2011

Booktalk: Curse of the Bizarro Beetle [Monsters; 2]


The teachers at Splurch Academy for Disruptive Boys are monsters. No, I’m not just saying that to be mean. They really are true monsters, both in form and in behavior. The headmaster is a psychotic vampire. There’s a dungeon in the basement. Nurse Bilgewater, acting Headmistress, caught Cody and his friends investigating the kitchen, which has some pretty gross food … does insta-gruel and dehydrated cabbage nuggets even count as food? Yuck! And they didn’t even steal any. Anyhow, they’re quarantined in the school infirmary as punishment with cuffs and tormented by Bilgewater herself, that nightmare. What kind of school is this, anyhow? When she does finally force the boys to eat, there are dead bugs swimming in their cabbage soup. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Curse of the Bizarro Beetle is the second book in the Splurch Academy for Disruptive Boys series by Julie Gardner Berry and Sally Faye Gardner.

Curse of the Bizarro Beetle [Splurch Academy; 2] by Julie Gardner Berry and Sally Faye Gardner. Booktalk to intermediate (elementary) grades and middle school. It is not necessary to have read the first in the series before this one.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Booktalk: Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich [Monsters; 1]


Every person out there has a favorite monster. You may not want to admit it, but it’s true. Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich is actually a book of monster poems featuring really well-known monsters like Frankenstein, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula, Godzilla, and all the rest. Each poem gives you some really embarrassingly hilarious and bizarre information on the monster. For example, there’s actually a poem called, ‘Godzilla Pooped on My Honda.’ It will give you all the gross-out details which I cannot. In another poem, Count Dracula was with a bunch of other monsters at night, trying to be Mr. Cool and all that, but the whole time he had spinach stuck on his teeth! And no one told him, but they all knew! How totally embarrassing. And did you know that the Invisible Man got a haircut? I can’t tell you how it turned it, but things got ugly. Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich by Adam Rex.