Wednesday, December 14, 2011

23. Snicker and Doodle

Mega Mash-Up
Draw Your Own Adventure! series
By Nikalas Catlow & Tim Wesson
$6.99 each, ages 7 and up, 96 pages

Crash, smash, kapowwe.

It's music to a boy's ears and when those words appear in books for reluctant boy readers, they're brilliant.

Fresh from Britain, this silly new series is a perfect fit for boys who'd rather be tearing it up than reading.

Catlow and Wesson think like boys and write as boys want to write: with lots of nutty scenarios and mash-ups.

In the first book, Robots take on gorillas. In the next, Romans clash with dinosaurs. And in the third, aliens tangle with mad scientists under the ocean.

Not only are there lots of bold sound words in the text, but there are plenty of burps, Kabooms and invitations for boys to join in the silliness.

As boys read an adventure, they're prompted to fill in missing details in pictures: icky things in a scientist's jar, missing body parts on a strange beast...

Sometimes they're even invited to invent contraptions with a stroke of their pencils.

In one book, they finish drawing a magnetic machine that will get the Earth spinning again. In another, they write sound effects for a fight in speech bubbles.

Catlow and Wesson's motto: "Prepare to laugh while you doodle and snicker while you read."

For more about this new series, go to megamash-up.com. Books #4 and #5 make their U.S. debut in July.

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