The Templeton Twins Have an Idea, Bk. 1

When their father, inventor and professor Elton Templeton, abruptly announces to thirteen-year-old twins Abigail and John that he’s accepted a new job at the Tickeridge-Baltock Institute of Technology (a.k.a. Tick-Tock Tech), the siblings are surprised. When they arrive on campus and see the word "Thief!!!!!!" scrawled across Dad’s picture, they become suspicious. The defacer emerges as Dean D. Dean, one of Professor Templeton’s former students and a mustache-twirler of the first degree. Dean’s undies are in a twist over a failing grade (thirteen years ago) and because he claims the professor stole his idea for a personal one-man helicopter. (Lots of people, beginning with da Vinci, have had that idea, argues Professor T. "My idea was, put it in a knapsack," whines Dean D. Dean.) Angry at being dismissed, Dean, aided by his twin Dan D. Dean, kidnaps John and Abigail; luckily, the sibs’ hobbies -- cryptic-crossword-solving and drum-playing -- come in handy against incompetent crooks. Throughout the story a direct-address narrator -- intentionally intrusive, self-aware, and kind of obnoxious -- relates events, provides commentary, and poses satiric "Questions for Review": "Explain, in fifty words or less, why you believe the story will actually get started, and why it will be wonderful"; "How would the Templeton twins’ lives have been different had they never been born?" Frequent digital illustrations and faux-scientific diagrams, along with changes in typeface, play up the story’s humor as well as highlighting the twins’ ingenuity. elissa gershowitz