Customer Reviews

Nightmare at the Book Fair

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I so hate giving bad reviews, but I just did not enjoy this book. My 10 year old daughter, who has read Dan Gutman's "The Homework Machine" and liked it very much, did not either. She didn't even finish it, and I had to force myself to continue reading. This had so much potential and sounded like it would be a great story - but instead I felt like a middle school English teacher grading creative writing papers. The story was just too weird and the chapters were only connected in that they were part of the main character's bizarre foray into the "nightmare at the book fair". In addition, I was surprised by several things in the book. There were pretty graphic descriptions of violence considering the age of the intended audience, and one's expectations going into the book. In one story, a conversation takes place suggesting half the Green Bay Packers football team is killed in a bus crash, as an explanation for another team's football win. In another situation, a face transplant that is to take place is too bloody and messy for the doctor, so someone else has to perform it. It wasn't that the material was so shocking, it was just that it didn't seem appropriate in this type of story. I hope Dan Gutman's next book will return to his previous level of quality.

My son had to read this book as his summer project...there was no choice, it was only this book! It is a great premise...a child gets hit on the head with a bunch a books and becomes a character in the books until he "wakes up". The nightmare is, the child hates to read!

It was not at all thought provoking. It used a lot of jumping around and it was confusing. I did not see the humor in it and it had adult content in it! There were "swear" words such as Holy___! and What the ____ and Freakin. These are sayings that are not allowed in my home and my son was uncomfortable reading them.

My son loves to read. It is a shame that this one was forced on the little guy. Parents should read this book first

I read this book aloud to a class of 25 sixth graders while teaching lessons about genre. Here are a few comments they made: "The best book ever!" "I loved all the genres!" "Made me laugh!" "Liked the first person format!" "Way funny!" "Makes me want to eat funnel cake!" "Deserves all 5 stars!"

My 6-year-old gifted son reads for 2 hours a day cruising through books of all kinds in a variety of genres and different reading levels. I bought this for him because I thought it sounded like a good read. Apparently I was mistaken. After a week, he hadn't made it very far - I'd say about a quarter of the way through it. I urged him to finish it, and he wasn't interested. I caught him with the book on his lap, daydreaming and staring into space - and that's not like him at all (he reads while walking, by flashlight under his sheets at night - even in the bathroom). After a month he had made no progress and he finally donated it. All he could tell me was that it was boring. Coming from a kid who is enthralled reading nonfiction books about blood cells or insects... a "boring" label from him means something indeed. With so many other books out there, I wouldn't recommend this, and especially not for a relunctant reader.

Dan Gutman has been writing for kids for years and really has a sense of the pacing and kinds of stories they enjoy. However, when I saw the main character's name, Trip Dinkleman, I really had to force myself into a state of willing suspension of disbelief. I don't know anyone named Dinkleman, but then I don't know anyone named Gutman either.

I think the casual reader can figure out the book's ending long before he or she gets there. But I was OK with that. The main thing was whether not the journey along the way was good, and the author provides plenty of excitement and pacing.

I think this book would be great for teachers to introduce the idea of genre to young readers. Gutman plunges through all of them, from science fiction to westerns to horror, and plays to the strengths of each. However, I did feel that he strained to deliver some of that. Still, this is a fun and fast read that teachers can read aloud and share with classes as well as talk about the various forms of novels that are available in the school library.

Trip Dinkleman is on his way to lacrosse tryouts when he's asked to help move some books for the book fair. He hates reading but is 'snagged' by the PTA president who insists it will take just a few minutes...until a whole shelf of dictionaries and encyclopedias falls on his head.

What follows next is a romp through various genres per chapeter: horror, sports fiction, adventure, science fiction, humor, mystery, reference, historical fiction, easy reader, animal fiction, fantasy, fiction for girls, and then concludes with Trip waking up.

While the idea of the book is fun and the layout is educational without preaching, "Nightmare at the Book Fair" doesn't tie itself up as nicely as I would like. The reader starts with Trip being knocked out, but in the last chapter, he was just reading all along from genre to genre? This from a kid who just hates to read? It's a leap of faith that asks a lot from the reader.

Also, there was no real plot, other than the conflict within each genre (i.e. he had to go in there and win it for the team in the last few minutes in the sports fiction section and he had to get away from the face-changing doctor in the horror section). The conflict itself was great to read because it allows the reader to say, "What if?" and allows a dialogue to be started. This is also a great teaching tool in the classroom for a writing exercise. If "Nightmare at the Book Fair" is the starting point, then the questions that follow would be: "What is your sports fiction?" or "Where and when would you enact your own historical fiction?"

I also think the reference chapter can be expanded to include more than a dictionary listing of A - Z. Various reference materials can be cited here, as our students today are more sophisticated.

I think Dan Gutman should be applauded as an author who has put a spin on how to get non-readers reading, but I have to give this 3-stars due to the questions that are left unanswered for the reader.

Trip Dinkleman is looking forward to going out for lacrosse. On his way to tryouts, he gets waylaid at the media center. Trip notices a big sign on the wall that reads "THIS WAY TO THE BOOK FAIR!" There is nothing in the world less interesting to him than a book fair because he doesn't like to read. Reading is just plain boring. While he's thinking about how much he detests reading, Mrs. Pontoon, the PTA president, asks him to help move book boxes. She says it will only be for a few minutes.

As Trip maneuvers an extremely heavy crate of books, it keels over and lands on his head. And when he opens his eyes, he finds that he is a character in the middle of a horror story called "Sugar Shock." He's invited into a haunted house by a girl who swears it's the scariest haunted house he'll ever enter. Of course, Trip is a little bit disoriented by finding himself at a boardwalk instead of the school's media center, but he decides not to worry about it and just go with the flow. However, the haunted house is beyond creepy. He screams out loud when he sees a cat with a dog's face. Then he's tempted by a funnel cake displayed in the haunted house's kitchen. There's nothing Trip loves more than a good funnel cake. He can't resist taking a big bite...and then finds out about the secret ingredient (yech!) just when a fellow named Professor Psycho is about to get the best of him...

Trip finds himself starring in a sports fiction story called "The Game on the Line." Can he save the day for his team, playing in the Super Bowl? But that's just the first of many questions for our hero as he enters story after story in genres covering adventure, science fiction (aliens try to save the world!), humor (slapstick silliness complete with tons of "boy" jokes), mystery, reference (definitions with a hidden message), historical fiction (in which Trip finds himself on the Apollo 11), easy reader (a poem that inspired the author to apologize to Dr. Seuss), animal fiction, fantasy, and a gender-bending girls' fiction story. Trip's adventures end with a final wink and a nod to THE WIZARD OF OZ.

The tongue-in-cheek fantasy "The Quest for the Gold-Plated Knick-Knack" is an especially appealing rib-tickler. It opens with the description "ice formed on the dell like the sound of invisible feet bathing delicately in the shaded depths and ancient whispers of twilight's soft darkness," continuing on in that manner until concluding, "But it doesn't matter, because none of that crap makes any sense." Next, Trip meets the judicious and mystical mentor named Hockaloogie, who explains that his purpose in the plot is to show up randomly, speak in Old English and not give away important information...just because.

Readers (including reluctant ones) will enjoy the genius concept of these rapid-fire stories, covering such a wide spectrum of genres. The stories themselves are filled with adventure and humor, and move at a rapid pace. Although Trip himself could be a little more fleshed out, the tales are way too fun to resist. And there's certainly something for everyone in the inspired NIGHTMARE AT THE BOOK FAIR.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon