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Summary
Summary
Introducing the Oodlethunks, a hilarious chapter book series starring a prehistoric girl and her wacky Stone Age family.Oona has found a very special egg. Oh, how she loves her baby! She'll do anything to protect this egg until it hatches. Then she can find out what's inside, even though it might just gobble her up! But Oona's precious bundle of eggy joy may never see the light of day. It seems everyone wants Oona's egg. Her little brother, Thunk, that smelly kid, Bruce Brute, and a bunch of others in her West Wog world all want a piece of Oona's treasure. Oona the protector, Oona the curious, Oona the mighty will do whatever it takes to safeguard her darling. No one will get their grimy, Cro-Magnony hands on her egg. Because, more than anything, Oona wants something of her very own to care for.National Book Award finalist Adele Griffin pairs with artist Mike Wu to deliver a cast of lovable, primitive family and friends in West Wog. The stories pop with adventure, original language, and an unstoppable protagonist who is as adorable as the egg she's working so hard to protect.
Author Notes
Mike Wu is a top animator, working first for Walt Disney and then Pixar Studios, where he animated such Oscar winners as The Incredibles and Toy Story 3 , among others, including Brave , Ratatouille , and Up . He is also the co-founder of Tiny Teru, a baby and toddler boutique featuring all hand-drawn items. Mike lives in Southern California with his family.
Adele Griffin is the highly acclaimed author of numerous books for middle grade and young adult readers. Her novels Sons of Liberty and Where I Want to Be are both National Book Award finalists. Her popular Witch Twins and Vampire Island series have each been made into Disney movies. Adele's thriller Loud Awake and Lost was hailed by Booklist as "exquisite" in a starred review. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two children.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-3-Oona wants a pet more than anything. Unfortunately, her younger brother is allergic to the coveted animal she really wants. Then she makes an amazing discovery, stumbling upon a very special egg. Once it has hatched, the siblings are shocked to discover a baby stegosaurus. Oona and Bruce go head-to-head over possession of the prehistoric pet. Funny and informational, this introductory story to Griffin's new chapter book series offers a modern twist on cave dwellers. The father is a stay-at-home would-be chef, while the mother works at marketing a newfangled contraption called a wheel. The mix of choppy, cave-child dialogue and cartoony illustrations makes for a playful, fast tale to which most modern kids can relate-sibling rivalry, the desire for a pet, the trials and tribulations of school and bullies. Griffin peppers her story with history, setting it in what would now be Colorado. There is an author's note describing the history of the area and the animals featured in the story. VERDICT A good chapter series for newly emergent and/or reluctant readers.-Kaitlin Malixi, Virginia Beach Public Library, VA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Eager for a pet, Oona Oodlethunk, the prehistoric narrator of this gleefully ana- chronistic series opener, brings home an enormous abandoned egg and dotingly cares for it, despite not knowing what's inside. "It's going to hatch into Something Cute," she tells herself, while worrying that it could be anything from a fossil to a giant raptor. (True, our prehistoric forebears didn't coexist with dinosaurs, but neither did they have names like Allison and Dave, as best we know.) Oona's forward-thinking parents (her mother is designing an ad campaign for the wheel while her father experiments in the kitchen) help with egg care, but when bully Bruce Brute decides he wants the egg, things get tricky. An author's note explains Griffin's (The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone) mixing of fact and fiction, while Wu's decidedly Flinstonian artwork-a mix of single- and double-page scenes, as well as comics sequences-adds to the fun. While millennia may separate Oona from today's readers, they should have no trouble relating to her struggles with sibling rivalry, troublesome bullies, and finding the perfect pet. Ages 8-12. Agent: Emily van Beek, Folio Literary Management. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
If you think children's books set in prehistory are all about the boys, Oona Oodlethunk's got your number. Meet the Oodlethunks. If the Flintstones were creatures of the early 1960s, then the Oodlethunks are their hipster millennial cousins. Mom's an on-the-go ad exec (her latest campaign: "It's not just a wheel"); Dad sells new recipes at the farmers market; little brother Bonk lives up to his name; and Oona just wants a pet her brother won't be allergic to. When she finds a gigantic abandoned egg, she thinks her prayers have been answered. Maybe it's a dud or contains a predator, but maybe it'll hatch into Something Cute. No matter what, Oona will do anything to protect it. She'll even conquer her greatest fear after the yet-unhatched Eggy disappears from Oona's home in broad daylight. Adults who bristle at the questionable chronology (prehistoric rope bridges and dino encounters?) are invited to take a chill pill. After all, the plot and central mystery surrounding Eggy's disappearance are cleverly done, and facts about the flora and fauna surrounding West Woggle, the topography of Denver (which will eventually replace West Woggle), and even the state fossil of Colorado crop up in unexpected places. Animation artist Wu's expressive drawings neatly bring this new modern Stone Age family's antics to life. Prehistoric? More like pre-hysterical. (Fantasy. 6-10) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Acclaimed Griffin deviates from her traditional middle- and high-school fare to create something for the elementary-school crowd. In this Flintstones-esque story, Oona Oodlethunk finds an egg. After lugging it back to her family's cave, she excitedly considers what the egg might become. Will it always remain an egg, or will it hatch into something either wonderful or dreadful? Patiently, she cares for Egg. However, unbeknownst to her, the day she goes to market, her younger brother, Bonk, trades Egg for Bruce Brute's bison bracelet. When Oona returns home, she is distraught that Egg is missing and searches everywhere around the cave and their yard. At last, Bonk confesses to his misdeed. He and Oona rush to Bruce's cave in time to see the egg crack and a beautiful baby stegosaurus emerge. Now the tension between Oona and Bruce escalates who will win Steg's loyalty? Wu's hilarious charcoal drawings are sure to elicit giggles from young readers, adding levity to this classic story of sibling rivalry and neighborhood bullies.--Petty, J. B. Copyright 2015 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
COULD EDWARD STRATEMEYER have possibly realized what he set in motion back in the early 20th century when he invented the modern machine-tooled juvenile book series with the Rover Boys, the Bobbsey Twins and Tom Swift? Today, the children's shelves in bookstores, libraries and bedrooms are groaning with volumes that can seem to find more inspiration in the ordinal allure of wearing big, bright numbers on their spines than in the old exigencies of character, plot, perspective and suchlike. This is true for every category of children's books, and especially so in the case of "chapter books," written for earlygrade students who have gotten the hang of picture books and are ready to move on to higher word counts and grayer pages. Visit a Barnes & Noble and it can be hard to find chapter books that aren't part of a series; perhaps they're squeezed off the shelves by the sheer yards needed to accommodate the dozens of Junie B. Jones and Magic Tree House titles. For publishers, the benefits of literary branding are as obvious as they are for manufacturers of snack foods and toothpaste. For kids? Well, they clearly like the comfort of familiar characters and situations, the security in knowing expectations will be met. (Adults aren't so different, by the way, as devotees of Sue Grafton, James Patterson and Helen Fielding can attest. Captain Underpants will have to undergo many more adventures before he catches up to Miss Marple or James Bond.) Can we call for a moratorium? Too late, because here are three brand-new chapter-book series, two nervy enough to brand their premier installments with big, fat numeral Is - no hedging of bets for these eager, confident beavers. Another leaves any promise of subsequent adventures implicit, at least until the reader arrives at its final page, where the narrator proclaims, "This is my book, or I should say, my first book." An ad for the second follows, but give thanks that the publisher has allowed readers to invest in the character and enjoy her story before moving to exploit the grade schooler's collector instinct. That restraint (comparative though it may be) is one reason "My Life in Pictures" strikes me as the best of the new crop. Two more reasons are the understated charms of Deborah Zemke's heroine, Bea Garcia, and of Zemke's skittery line drawings, which have some of the winsome flavor of Roz Chast's cartoons, minus the teeth-grinding angst. "My Life in Pictures" is ostensibly Bea's illustrated diary or journal, the literary form du jour for chapter-book series. Bea herself is a not-unfamiliar heroine: a creative, passionate, insecure-but-not-too-insecure grade schooler with a loyal pet (Sophie, "the smartest dog in the world"), an annoying little brother (Pablo, a.k.a. "the Big Pest") and loving but occasionally clueless parents. She could be the literary daughter of Ramona Quimby, or granddaughter of Betsy and Tacy. Bea's problems unfold when her best friend and next-door neighbor, Yvonne, moves to Australia and is replaced by Bert, a rude, feral boy with ferocious eyebrows and outsize gifts for burping and getting under Bea's skin. To Zemke's credit, Bert's boorish exterior never cracks to reveal the wounded bird within; he remains true to his own probably soulless self, but Bea finds a way to defang him and establish neighborhood détente. Readers may not clutch Bea to their hearts or carry her around in the filthy recesses of their backpacks for months on end, but I think they will gladly welcome Bea back for Book 2. You could describe Oona Oodlethunk, the heroine of "The Oodlethunks : Oona Finds an Egg," as Bea Garcia transported back to cave-person times. Or maybe Bea is Oona dressed in Gap Kids rather than a pelt. Whichever the case, Oona too has an annoying little brother, a pair of loving but occasionally clueless parents and a rude, feral neighbor boy with repulsive habits, though he is named Bruce, not Bert. Another difference is that Oona sometimes worries about being eaten. A third is that Oona lacks a loyal pet; how she gets one is the subject of "Oona Finds an Egg." The story, by Adele Griffin, a two-time National Book Award finalist for her young adult fiction, leans too heavily on whimsical prehistoric nomenclature for my taste - Oona's brother is named Bonk, and she finds her egg on Mount Urp - but the denouement, which borrows a plot twist from Beverly Cleary, will delight kids as well as adults who think carbon dating is a secular-humanist hoax designed to disguise the fact that humans and dinosaurs shared the same planet. (The Oodlethunks may well be big in the evangelical home-schooling market.) The book's illustrator, Mike Wu, has worked as an animator at Disney and Pixar, which explains why his drawings of the Oodlethunks, with their big eyes and wide grins, feel so familiar and so movie-ready. The Mouse Scouts series, judging from its first two volumes, is so gentle it almost feels as if it hails from an earlier era. Not only do these books manage to be modestly funny while eschewing burps, boogers and earwax, they also project a level of respect for adult authority that is rare in 21st-century children's literature. Here, it goes with the territory: The two lead characters, cautious Violet and headstrong Tigerlily, are members of a Girl Scouts-like organization for talking mice, the Acorn Scouts, which provides them with snappy uniforms, a handbook, a motto, a pledge and an intimidating troop leader named Miss Poppy. (The talking squirrels and chipmunks who feature in some of the scouts' adventures are either uninterested in joining or not eligible.) Rounding out the troop are bookish Junebug; vain Hyacinth; hungry Cricket; and Petunia, who lacks identifying adjectives but whose tail is notably crooked thanks to an unfortunate encounter with a mousetrap. Don't worry: While not without peril, the animal kingdom created by the author-illustrator Sarah Dillard owes more to Beatrix Potter and E. B. White's "Stuart Little" than to Jack London or George Orwell. Indeed, the gravest challenge facing the Acorn Scouts is learning how to work together so they can earn new merit badges. There are 16 in total, to judge by an excerpt from the Mouse Scouts Handbook, and it looks as if they will be doled out one per Mouse Scout title. "Have you earned the latest badge?" the jacket flap copy on the first two asks. Someone deserves a merit badge in marketing.