shipwrecksteph's review
4.0
Reviewing an ARC from Harper Chapters.
My 8 year old nephew will freakin love this. It's about kids, who battle bats, whose weapon is bad breath. What's not to like?
Since it's the introductory volume of a series, some of the book is about setting up the characters and location. That's done fairly efficiently and then they're off to the races. It's a quick story, but the kids are all quite different from each other. So it's entertaining to see them interact. The action is a good balance of scary and silly. And there's plenty of mystery set up for future volumes.
Harper Chapters also has their eye on formatting the books to encourage new chapter book readers. In particular (I think) readers who may be struggling. There's a progress bar at the end of every chapter, 4th wall breaking encouragement from characters and a page of metrics at the end. Apparently this book has 5118 words. I think for some kids this may foster feelings of accomplishment. (I, for one, do love checking off a task finished.) I do fear others might "know what you're up to" and feel patronized. So the lesson here would be know the reader you are buying for. If these features work for them, I suspect they will work well.
My 8 year old nephew will freakin love this. It's about kids, who battle bats, whose weapon is bad breath. What's not to like?
Since it's the introductory volume of a series, some of the book is about setting up the characters and location. That's done fairly efficiently and then they're off to the races. It's a quick story, but the kids are all quite different from each other. So it's entertaining to see them interact. The action is a good balance of scary and silly. And there's plenty of mystery set up for future volumes.
Harper Chapters also has their eye on formatting the books to encourage new chapter book readers. In particular (I think) readers who may be struggling. There's a progress bar at the end of every chapter, 4th wall breaking encouragement from characters and a page of metrics at the end. Apparently this book has 5118 words. I think for some kids this may foster feelings of accomplishment. (I, for one, do love checking off a task finished.) I do fear others might "know what you're up to" and feel patronized. So the lesson here would be know the reader you are buying for. If these features work for them, I suspect they will work well.
jessalynn_librarian's review against another edition
4.0
September 2020 - short chapters, lots of excitement, and frequent illustrations. This made a fun real-aloud over the course of a few nights, and Ben was excited to get the next one in the series. A touch scary, but not too much for my 2nd grader. Main characters are all Latinx.
mrs_mazzola_reads's review against another edition
4.0
A slightly spooky, action-packed adventure with Latinx protagonists in an early chapter book? Sign me up! There is a definite need for these stories with diverse representation (particularly #ownvoices stories) and I know it will be super popular with my kiddos, especially those who already love Eerie Elementary and the Notebook of Doom.
*Thank you to Edelweiss+ and the publisher for the digital copy*
*Thank you to Edelweiss+ and the publisher for the digital copy*
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