Freddy and the French Fries #1:: Fries Alive! [Hardcover]

David Baldacci (Author), Rudy Baldacci (Illustrator)

Book Description

Grade Level: 3 and up | Series: Freddy and the French Fries

A fast-paced, funny, fast-food 'thriller' from New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci! Meet Theodore, Wally, Curly, Ziggy, Si, and Meese-French fries you'll love so much you won't want to eat them! But shoestring, waffle, wedge, curly, and crinkle-cut potatoes were never more irresistible than in David Baldacci's zany adventure about five giant fries that come to life-well, six if you count heads....

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-6–It's not easy being a boy genius when your father runs a floundering health-conscious burger joint and your older sister's a deeply annoying wannabe actress. But Freddy T. Funkhouser isn't distressed. He has a plan to win the prize for the best float at the local Founders' Day Parade and bring more attention to his dad's business. To do so, he has constructed five life-sized mechanical fries, each with its own personality. The hope is to bring these kooky creations to life through nanotechnology and a million jiggy-watts of power and then use them on his float. Yet when an experiment involving a dam and a bolt of lightning does awaken the electric fries, Freddy finds his troubles have only just begun. Baldacci, best known for his adult thrillers, is attempting to reach out to reluctant readers by creating a series very much in the vein of Dav Pilkey's "Captain Underpants" series (Scholastic), but for an older audience. Unfortunately, he lacks Pilkey's gleeful silliness and relies too heavily on gross-out jokes and slapstick pratfalls. His attempt to teach kids about the importance of friends and sticking together gets bogged down by poor writing and two-dimensional characters.–Elizabeth Bird, New York Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 2-4. Adult suspense writer Baldacci tries his hand at children's fantasy in the first of a proposed series featuring nine-year-old science geek Freddy Funkhouser and his gang of monster fries. Freddy and his father and sister run a failing restaurant called Burger Castle. Freddy's nemesis is bully Adam Spanker, whose family owns a successful burger joint, Patty Cakes. Freddy's fries create unbelievable trouble (wreaking havoc on the baseball field and hitching a ride on top of a moving freight train), but they also save the day (and Burger Castle) in the end. Baldacci's over-the-top action vaults at breakneck speed from one crisis to another, his characters are intentionally stereotyped (somewhat like their television and video-game counterparts), and body orifice humor abounds. While such elements might give adults pause, kids, particularly fans of Daniel Pinkwater, Dav Pilkey, and Steven Manes, will undoubtedly be delighted. An accompanying Web site promises interviews, contests, and previews of upcoming books in the series. Kay Weisman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers (June 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316159980
• ISBN-13: 978-0316159982
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,083,220 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Baldacci was born in Virginia, in 1960, where he currently resides. He received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Virginia Commonwealth University and a law degree from the University of Virginia. Mr. Baldacci practiced law for nine years in Washington, D.C., as both a trial and corporate attorney.
David Baldacci has published seventeen novels: Absolute Power, Total Control, The Winner, The Simple Truth, Saving Faith, Wish You Well, Last Man Standing, The Christmas Train, Split Second, Hour Game, The Camel Club, The Collectors, Simple Genius, Stone Cold, and The Whole Truth; and in his young adult series, Freddy and the French Fries: Fries Alive! and Freddy and the French Fries: The Adventures of Silas Finklebean. He has also published a novella for the Dutch entitled Office Hours, written for Holland's Year 2000 "Month of the Thriller." Baldacci authored a short story, "The Mighty Johns," as part of a mystery anthology published in 2002.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars silly fun for kids, October 30, 2005

By 

Charlie_in_la "charlie" (los angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Freddy and the French Fries #1:: Fries Alive! (Hardcover)

Hey, this is not rocket science...

Unless you consider Si and Meese...

Warning, this review is written by an adult, and I had great fun reading the book. So, if you have children who read, let them read this book. It is fun, it is silly, it is good. So, let your child read the book. If they do, they will find out that family is best, even if she is an older sister, and that parents are important. Oh, and, the younger brother ...well... he should have had more parental and sisterly guidance, but he did the job.

Congrats to younger brothers everywhere.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another enthusiastically recommended Freddy story that presents zany easy reading adventures for children, September 11, 2005

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Freddy and the French Fries #1:: Fries Alive! (Hardcover)

Kids ages 8-12 will find an easy - and attractive - reader in David Baldacci's latest Freddy story, Freddy And The French Fries: Fries Alive!. Here a plan to win new business for the family Burgle castle results in a secret invention gone awry when Freddy's crazy creations wreck havoc. Another enthusiastically recommended Freddy story that presents zany easy reading adventures for children.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Honey! I Created Living French Fries!, June 3, 2005

By 

B. Merritt "filmreviewstew.com" (WWW.FILMREVIEWSTEW.COM, Pacific Grove, California United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Freddy and the French Fries #1:: Fries Alive! (Hardcover)

Young Freddy Funkhouser is having problems. First, his father, Alfred, a genius inventor, can't seem to make any of his inventions work well enough to make the family money. Second, his older sister, Nancy, loves to spout lines from Shakespeare and TV shows to anyone who will listen, hoping that her acting career will take off. How embarrassing!

Freddy is trying to help break his family out of their obscure rut by building an award winning float for the Pookesville Founder's Day Parade. If he can do it, perhaps their floundering family restaurant - that offers healthy food compared to the burger stand across the street owned by the Spanker family - might take off. A large task considering the Spankers ALWAYS win the float contest. But if Freddy has anything to say about it, they won't win this year! With the aid of Howie Kapowie, his one and only friend in town who seems solely to care about eating cheese cubes, they have very little chance. And with Adam Spanker (the town hooligan) always on their heels, things look even bleaker.

Can Freddy do it?

Not on his own. And he knows it. So he rigs up a contraption of nanotechnology mixed with super-secret potatoes, and an interesting accident occurs. When lightning strikes the potatoes, they turn into living, breathing, talking ...uh ...spuds. Fries alive! And now with Theodore, Wally, Curly, Si, and Meese, the town of Pookesville is in for an amazing surprise ...and so is the rival Spanker family. Can a misfit family use its brains to beat the brawn of the town?

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David Baldacci is normally known for his crime novels (Absolute Power, Hour Game, and the less enjoyable Split Second), but here he's dunked his hand into the children's literature cookie jar, perhaps hoping to come up with some tasty new treat for readers.

But no ...

Like so many other children's books and films, 'Freddy and the French Fries' treads over old themes and tries to put on a new face. Ever seen the film 'Honey, I Shrunk the Kids'? If you have, you will undoubtedly see parallels to it in this book (i.e., a genius father, a smart family that's stunted because of their intellect, absurd obstacles that need to be overcome by using technology, and, in the end, triumph).

That being said, this book will probably appeal to the preteen because of its fast pace, outrageous names (Howie Kapowie, Patty Cakes, Nanny Boo-Boo, etc.), and its action scenes.

There's also some learning that takes place that will obviously make parents happy. Such as knowing the proper term for siamese twins (conjoined); the advantages - and disadvantages - of eating soy products rather than hamburgers; how to beat a bully using your brains and not your fists; and a very basic understanding of how nanotechnology might benefit us.

All in all I think this book's chapters might be enjoyed by kids at bedtime, but don't expect much originality.