A Whole Nother Story

My 9 yr old and I loved it. Great story to read together at bedtime.

I bought this book for my 9 year old son. We read something together every day. We nearly fell out of our chairs several times laughing at this book. Angry Tibetan Yak indeed!! The creativity and imagination in both the characters and the plot was outstanding! The weaving together of all the story lines was sheer genius! We grew to love the Cheeseman family and the other characters. (The good ones anyway). We cannot wait for the next book whatever it's name is because it is on our MUST HAVE list now! Hurry up Dr. Cuthbert Soup!! We are waiting!!

I'd better start at the beginning, which goes like this, in the timelessly elegant prologue by Dr. Cuthbert Soup: "If I could give you all just one word of advice, it would be... well, an incomplete sentence. Besides being grammatically iffy, I'm sure you'd agree that a single word of advice is rarely of much use. Even the phrase 'Look out!' (which could prove to be life-saving advice--especially where large falling objects or missing manhole covers are concerned) is two words. "To simply shout out 'Look!' to a friend as a tuba falls from a ninth-story window toward his unsuspecting head will, at best, only serve to make sure he gets a good look at the tuba before it parades him, unceremoniously, into the sidewalk." I have to say, any author who can use "parade" as a verb in quite that way is a man after my own heart. Assuming the author is a man--who knows? A Whole Nother Story is very much in the vein of Lemony Snickett as far as having a goofy invented author/narrator, odd interpositions, and a tongue-in-cheek tone. Cuthbert Soup introduces himself and then the true heroes of our story: Mr. Ethan Cheeseman and, more important, his three children, who have no friends despite being "smart, pleasant, witty, attractive, polite, and relatively odor free." But their father is one of those handy fictional characters who has invented a very dangerous machine, the subject of a search by a super-secret government agency, spies from an Eastern European country, and the representatives of an evil corporation. In fact, one of those groups arranged the death of Mrs. Olivia Cheeseman two years earlier. Which is why Cheeseman and his offspring--along with a psychic dog and a sock puppet--are constantly on the move with the not-quite-finished time/space travel (LVR) device. Note that the Cheeseman kids rename themselves with every move, so in Chapter One they're Barton, Saffron, and Crandall, but they're Jough, Maggie, and Gerard for the rest of the book. Or rather, Gerard LaFontaine, Magenta-Jean Jurgenson, and Jough Psmythe (the latter only sounds ordinary!). Banana guns, the appeal of dirt clods, Jough's new friend/baseball manager Elliot, and a traveling circus sideshow without a circus are just a few of the jokes you'll come across in Soup's offbeat first outing. The book evokes the humor of writers like Douglas Adams or, according to Kirkus, Dave Barry. (Be sure to pay attention to the way the circus sideshow has humanely gotten rid of its wild animals.) As head of the Center for Unsolicited Advice, Dr. Cuthbert Soup pauses every so often to give readers advice loosely related to the narrative. For example, we have a page titled "Some Generous Advice on Gift Giving" that clarifies: "Good gifts: A bottle of champagne, a box of fine Belgian chocolates, the Statue of Liberty. Bad gifts: A bottle of shampoo, a box of fine Belgian matches, the Trojan horse." The plot of A Whole Nother Story occasionally meanders and stalls, while characters

I'm hoping that nobody notices that Santa read the copy that was under the Christmas tree! What a terrific read. I've been telling my husband my favorite parts, but there are too many to list here. If you're looking for a book that will keep you entertained while you read it to your kids or one that you want to read when they're done, this is it. The humor appeals to young and old alike with enough adventure and twists and turns to keep all levels interested. A great find. Hope there will be more from Dr. Soup.

A perfect book for any age. As an adult reading to my children I had to stop several times because I was laughing so hard. The suspense also had us all on the edge of our seats. My children loved the adventure and laughed out loud on every, or at least every other, page! A great choice for a clean, exciting adventure book loaded with humor. Loved it!

What a great story for all ages. The humor is clean and clever. We especially loved the "unsolicited advice" given throughout the story. Cuthbert Soup is on our list of new favorite authors. Can't wait for the sequel!