Marshmallow reviews Funville Adventures by A.O. Fradkin and A.B. Bishop

Marshmallow reviews a recent book published by the good folks at Natural Math: Funville Adventures by A.O. Fradkin and A.B. Bishop.

Marshmallow’s quick take: If you like books that are secretly about math, then Funville Adventures might be the book for you. It is basically an adventure book about a sister and a brother, so that, too, might be of interest to some readers. 

Marshmallow’s Summary (with spoilers): When an evil slide (yes, an evil slide) kidnaps the fourth grader Emmy and her five-year-old little brother Leo, they find themselves in a world full of what I will call Mathamagic.

In this world, called Funville, they first meet two people named Harvey and Doug. Together they play Hide-And-Go-Seek in a very unusual way. While playing, they find out that the people in this world have super powers. Harvey’s power is to halve objects in size and Doug’s power is to double objects in size. Then they go and eat lunch with Harvey and Doug’s friend Blake. Blake’s power is to erase and clean stuff. Blake applies his power on Emmy’s notebook and the outcome is not very good. 

Emmy and Leo travel through Funville and come across problems. They make new friends and are invited to a birthday party. At the birthday party they recognize some familiar faces that they have met before in the time they have spent at Funville. At the birthday party, they have a good time playing Hot Potato and Musical Chairs, and eating ice cream. As you can expect the games are not the same as they are in our world. Musical Chairs needs a referee because everyone tries to cheat by using their powers. Hot Potato also is a game in which everyone attempts to cheat by either making the potato heavier or doubling the potato and ending up with two potatoes. 

There is a lot more happening in Funville Adventures, but I don’t want to spoil it all for you. Why not just read it yourselves?

Marshmallow’s Review: Funville Adventures is an easy book that you can read quite quickly. It’s a chapter book, more or less, about one hundred pages long, and it is a fun book to read. 

There are no big conflicts, no bad characters trying to hurt the people involved, and once Emmy and Leo find each other, the main story consists of the two of them exploring this new place. As the reader, it is also amusing to try and figure out the math going on. 

Marshmallow’s rating: 90%