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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Ambitious and funny, but doesn't quite work, September 15, 2008
This review is from: Nightmare at the Book Fair (Hardcover)
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Trip Dinkleman loves to play lacrosse and is on his way to tryouts when the president of the PTA asks him to help her move some books for the book fair. Trip hates reading and has no intention of going to the book fair, but reluctantly agrees to help out. He thinks it will only take a couple of minutes but when a stack of books falls on his head, he is off on a series of adventures. Along the way he will meet a crazy doctor, become involved in a murder mystery, turn into a girl, play in the super bowl, land on the moon, and much more.
"Nightmare at the Book Fair" is Dan Gutman's ambitious attempt at showing children the joys of reading. Except for the first and last chapter (which introduce and conclude the book) each chapter features a different type of fiction: horror; sports fiction; adventure; science fiction; humor; mystery; historical fiction; animal fiction; fantasy; and fiction for girls. The book has two "intermissions" - the first is called reference and is dictionary-like and contains a secret hidden message; the second contains a long poem about a boy who loved to read. The book also shows different types of speech such as alliteration.
"Nightmare at the Book Fair" is a fun book to read, even if it doesn't quite work. There are a lot of great aspects to the book - such as the last sentence of each chapter is the first sentence of the next chapter. While the book is for children, there are plenty of humorous things for adults as well - the football players are told to win one for the Lipper - and lots of puns (Dink travels through the Gates of Bill and the Woods of Tiger). There are a lot of Wizard of Oz references and a few good-humored jabs at the Olsen twins. While the book does a good job of showing the different types of fiction, some work better than others do. The mystery and historical fiction chapters were outstanding while the humor one didn't work for me (odd in a book that is generally very funny).
The one thing that kept me from totally enjoying the book is that there is no real plot outside of Dink getting hit on the head with the books. None of the chapters (outside of the first and last) advance the plot and none of the chapters has a real plot - Dink just moves from place to place in the book with no real cohesiveness. The book ends up feeling like a gimmick, not a novel.
"Nightmare at the Book Fair" is fun to read but doesn't quite work.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not necessarily a book I would give my 10-year-old!, September 8, 2008
This review is from: Nightmare at the Book Fair (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Trip Dinkleman hates to read, and wants to try out for the Lacrosse team, but things are never that simple. He attends a book fair and is knocked unconscious when several books strike him in the head. While unconscious, "Dink" has one misadventure after another, among them ....he is trapped in a haunted house where a Psycho professor wants to steal his face; he is forced to jump from a plane without a parachute; he is a quarterback during a Super Bowl game where the original coach died and the team was killed in a bus accident; he was present when aliens attack earth because we Earthlings are ruining the environment; he is part of a superhero team; he is suspected of killing his principal; he walks on the moon with Neil Armstrong in 1969; he is a cat whose sister wants to take over the world by taking over, using methods like peeing on the carpet or coughing up hairballs on the bed; he is in the body of a girl (who loves pink) and a few others. Each chapter addresses one adventure.
Now I will focus on how I felt about the novel. First, I liked the concept of the book, each chapter is a different experience or a "Trip" adventure. However, what should have flowed into one fantastic piece of kids literature, sometimes seemed confusing and not well explained. Don't get me wrong, there were some entertaining and somewhat insightful stories (The Legend of Reed McReedy about a kid who loves to read, but whose love is stifled by some well meaning, although misguided community members), but there were a few that I just didn't get (The Quest for the Gold Plated Knick-Knack). Another problem that I had with the book was the fact that there were a few things that I am not sure that as a mother of a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old, I am ready to discuss. First, my criticism is not that I am an adult and can't appreciate some of the stuff in the stories, but topics of murder (more than one actually), trans-gendered persons, psychotic professors and other adult situations, I don't think are necessarily appropriate to have without some discussion. And unfortunately, a lot of kids read and watch things, digest them and have no real understanding of what they mean without their parents knowledge or permission. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in censorship, just some more explanation to the read instead of just a large amount of information to digest. Do I see myself having a conversation about murdering my principal or having a parent who is trans-gendered with my son who is 10? Maybe eventually with a little more dialog and more information. But if he had just checked this book out of the library, read it and didn't ask me any questions, who knows what his understanding of these concepts would be. Even the mysterious savior, in more than one story, turned out to be a little "Freudian" in nature, with no real explanation given except for a few sentences on the last page. SO (and I'm not even sure that one would know what I am talking about unless they read it) would I pass this book to my 10 year old? Now that I have read it, and know what it is about..um..maybe, with some discussion.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dan Gutman Lighter Fare, March 22, 2010
This review is from: Nightmare at the Book Fair (Hardcover)
My ten year old son, an avid reader, whipped through this book--mostly because he couldn't put it down. It was a great diversion from the weightier stuff he has to read for school, as well as some of the other Gutman books. Good fun.
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