Rating: Not for me

This book appears to be intended for an early elementary audience, but the poor attitudes, disrespect of authority, and eye-roll snark seem more like dreaded teenager behaviors. I am *not* excited about it at all.

There was so much *not* to like:

  • disobeying/talking rudely about safety boundaries: (e.g., disregarding teacher’s instructions to stay out of a shipwreck, “I’m not allowed up to the surface without one of my parents being with me. I know that sounds really lame – I mean, I’m ten years old what do they think I’m going to do? Go sunbathing on the beach?”
  • awful attitude towards parents (sarcastic towards his dad’s jokes, “as far as parents are concerned, everything fun is ‘wrong!’,” “my parents are so embarrassing!”, the kid ambushes his mom, giving her a big fright so that she drops the meal she’s made)
  • poor marriage models: dad says, “Why’s my breakfast on the floor? ” and doesn’t help clean it, just tells jokes & leaves.
  • lousy attitude about school (e.g., knocks a field trip “but at least it was a day out of school,” talk about how working in groups is annoying, describing teachers lesson as boring several times)
  • name calling; anchor face, jelly belly, sea snail. Tooth pick
  • bullying/giving in to peer pressure (e.g., are you coming or are you going to stay there making bubbles your with rears?)
  • Age of the earth conservatives will not like that the endnotes say sharks have been around for 400 million years.