The Exquisite Corpse Adventure

Gr 4—6—As their circus train barrels headlong to potential doom, Joe and Nancy receive an urgent plea for help from their long-lost parents. Going on a tip from an Einstein-esque mad scientist, the twins learn that the only way to save their family is to find and piece together a Top Secret Robot whose services are crucial to the success of their mission. What follows is a cross-dimensional, time-warping adventure that has the heroes making unusual new friends, enduring bad knock-knock jokes, and battling villains most evil-including a narcoleptic clown and some very rotten eggs. Twenty well-known children's authors and illustrators, including Natalie Babbitt, Susan Cooper, Kate DiCamillo, Jack Gantos, and Steven Kellogg, collaborated to create this story, each penning a chapter and passing it on to the next. This concept is exceptionally creative. Unfortunately, the overall effect is that of too many cooks working over a single pot. The idea might have worked better spread over several books, as with "The 39 Clues" (Scholastic), or with fewer writers wielding the pen. As is, the effort has a disjointed feel and reads more like a series of randomly related vignettes than one continuous story. Even avid readers may have trouble following the multiple threads.—Alissa J. LeMerise, Oxford Public Library, MI