Book Bunnies

Caramel reviews Glork Patrol and the Magic Robot by James Kochalka

Today Caramel reviews Glork Patrol and the Magic Robot by James Kochalka, the third book in his Glork Patrol series, published in 2023. As usual, Sprinkles is asking questions and taking notes.

The book bunnies received this book as a review copy.

Sprinkles: So Caramel, you found another book with a robot in it!

Caramel: Yes, I have.

S: Tell me a bit about it. What is this book about?

C: Gonk and Baby Quackaboodle find a box on their door steps, and it turns out to be a little robot. Then Gonk’s father says it is his robot, and names it Glorkbot.

S: Those are some weird names.

C: The creatures with those names are even weirder. Each of them has three eyes. And Baby Quackaboodle is a very long snake with two arms and some funny hairdo which kind of looks like those flowers called birds of paradise.

S: Yes, and Gonk seems to be a pink walking mouth with three eyes and two teeth basically.

C: Yes. And he does not speak with correct English always. He says things like “Him don’t care about little robots”. So he is probably really young. His dad looks more humanoid, but he also has three eyes and three teeth. And he has a backpack who talks, named Super Backpack.

S: Dora the Explorer also had a talking backpack. It can be useful to have a talking backpack, no?

C: Yes. I could use it to help tell me exactly where my pencil box is. And if it has eyes, then it could tell me what is going on behind me.

S: Makes sense to me! So in this book, tell me, what happens with this little robot and the other characters?

C: Gonk and Baby Quackaboodle take Glockbot for a walk and then Gonk realizes it will do whatever it is told to do. So they tell him to dance, so fast that its battery runs out. Well at first they are not sure what happened, because the bot just falls down, but then the Magic Robot tells them that its battery is out.

S: Wait. What is the Magic Robot?

C: It is this big giant robot head that also has magic. Though I am not sure why a robot, which is mechanical, would need to use magic. And inside it is another! It’s kind of weird.

S: Well, the whole story is quite wacky, I’d say.

C: Yep.

S: But you love wacky, don’t you?

C: Yep, that’s me.

Caramel is reading Glork Patrol and the Magic Robot by James Kochalka. — Caramel is reading *Glork Patrol and the Magic Robot* by James Kochalka.

S: It turns out that this is actually the third story in the Glork Patrol series. And before those two books, there was another series called the Glorkian Warrior series, and even a video game. They all seem to feature Gonk’s dad. Apparently he is the Glorkian Warrior.

C: I want to read all those books too!

S: Why?

C: Because I liked these weirdos. And they have robots and space travel and all kinds of funky things. At least that is what it looks like when we read their descriptions.

S: Okay Caramel, we might look into some of these other books. I agree that these look right up your alley.

C: Yes, exactly.

S: So if you were to describe Glork Patrol and the Magic Robot by James Kochalka in three words, what would you say?

C: Colorful, hilarious, wacky.

S: Those describe this book well Caramel. It is really very colorful, isn’t it?

C: Yes, there is a lot of yellow, green, blue, pink, a little bit of brown for the ground, but the writing is very large and easy to read, and there is a lot of motion and some explosions! Glorkbot really looks like it is dancing!

S: You’re right. It actually does.

C: So yes, I liked this book a lot, and I want to read more about these weirdos.

S: Understood Caramel, I’m glad you enjoyed it so much. So let us wrap this review up then. What do you want to tell our readers?

C: Stay tuned for more book bunny reviews!

Caramel had a lot of fun reading Glork Patrol and the Magic Robot by James Kochalka and is curious to read more about these wacky characters. — Caramel had a lot of fun reading *Glork Patrol and the Magic Robot* by James Kochalka and is curious to read more about these wacky characters.

Marshmallow reviews Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie

Today Marshmallow reviews Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories, a book that collects together all twenty short stories Agatha Christie wrote featuring her favorite detective, Miss Marple; the original dates of the stories range from 1932 to 1961. Sprinkles, who has been a life-long Christie fan, is asking questions and taking notes.

Sprinkles: Marshmallow, you know that I was so happy to find this collection of Miss Marple stories! But I was especially excited to have you read them, too. So what did you think?

Marshmallow: At first I found them very confusing.

S: How come?

M: I found the language a bit challenging at first. But reading the stories the second time, I got a lot more, and I really enjoyed them.

S: I guess the language is not contemporary. Christie wrote some of these almost a hundred years ago.

M: Yes. There were a lot of things I did not know about. For example you and I needed to look up the “hundreds and thousands” and the trifle that was one of the main plot points in the story “The Tuesday Night Club”.

S: Yes, apparently we do not know every traditional English dish and the usual ingredients for them.

M: And then there was “banting”. Apparently it means to diet by not eating things with carbs in them. And it is named after a scientist, Sir Frederick Grant Banting, who was one of the people who discovered insulin.

S: Yes, one learns a lot by reading!

M: Yes, of course.

S: So overall, what did you think of Miss Marple? Can you tell us a bit about who she is and what kind of a person she is?

M: She is an older lady, who seems like a nice and kind and easily distracted person, but she is extremely smart and insightful. So the first few stories in the book are told in the setting of a dinner party, where people are sharing mysteries and challenging others to figure them out. In almost all of them, everyone else is stumped, and Miss Marple outwits everyone, figuring things out.

S: And in the one that she claims she could not figure out the mystery, she actually did, but she had a reason not to divulge her reasoning. Right?

M: Right.

Marshmallow is reading Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie. — Marshmallow is reading *Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories* by Agatha Christie.

S: So I have been a fan of Agatha Christie stories since I was a young bunny around your age. This is your very first exposure to Christie. What do you think about her writing style?

M: Other than the fact that her language took me a little while to get used to, I think she is a clever storyteller. The plots are very good. The mysteries are hard to figure out on one’s own, but when they are explained at the end, they all make sense, and you see that the author had sprinkled in the right clues all along.

S: Agreed. When compared with your favorite detective, Nancy Drew, how does Miss Marple measure up?

M: I am still quite loyal to Nancy Drew, and I don’t want to hurt her feelings. But Miss Marple is sharp, and she can figure things out pretty quickly.

S: Then again, you did not read a full novel with Miss Marple, so maybe in the novels she is more like Nancy, and the story opens up slowly and more gradually.

M: Yes, it is true that all Nancy Drew books I read were long-form novels. In a short story, things have to happen quicker.

S: You do not review short story collections much for our blog.

M: True. I do not read too many short story collections. I have read and reviewed Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales by Soman Chainani and The Demigod Diaries by Rick Riordan, which were short story collections, but it seems that most stuff I read is in novel form.

S: You know Agatha Christie wrote a ton of novels, right?

M: Yep. Wikipedia says that she wrote 66 detective novels.

S: That is a lot!

M: Yes, I agree. So did you read all of them, Sprinkles?

S: I read all her books that my school library had, but no, I did not read all. I also do not remember any of them. I should reread them at some point. Would you join me? Did this book make you curious to read some of her novels?

M: Yep. I did watch the movie version of The Murder on the Orient Express, though I do not remember much. So maybe we should read that first.

S: Yes, that is a classic! Okay, let us do that. Alright, this is probably a good time to end this review. How would you rate Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie?

M: I’d rate it 100%, though it did take me a second read!

S: Sounds good to me. What do you want to tell our readers next?

M: Stay tuned for more amazing book reviews from the book bunnies!

Marshmallow rates Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie 100%. — Marshmallow rates *Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories* by Agatha Christie 100%.

Caramel reviews Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom by Louis Sachar

Caramel has recently been reading Louis Sachar’s Wayside School series. Today he reviews the fourth and last book in the series, Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom, published only in 2020.

(You might like to read Caramel’s reviews of Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Wayside School Is Falling Down, and Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger before moving on.)

Caramel reviews Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom by Louis Sachar. — Caramel reviews *Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom* by Louis Sachar.

Sprinkles: Okay Caramel. I think we finally came to the end of these Wayside School books.

Caramel: Yes. Unfortunately.

S: This one was written so many years after the previous one. There are almost twenty-five years in between. Did you notice anything?

C: No! This book picks up where the other one ended. At least the students and the teachers are all the same.

S: That is interesting. So then there could not have been twenty years in between the two books, in the story world.

C: Exactly.

S: Apparently the author wrote this new book because he was worried about a lot of things going on in the world. Is the book itself about sad or scary things?

C: Not really. It is just as funny and wacky as the other books.

S: But there is this cloud of doom? Tell me a bit about that.

C: The cloud of doom is a weird cloud that makes everyone feel anxious and unhappy.

S: Hmm. The cloud seems to appear some time in Chapter 8. Then it hangs around till the end of the book, right?

C: Right. But still a lot of funny and strange things happen.

Caramel is reading Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom by Louis Sachar. — Caramel is reading *Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom* by Louis Sachar.

S: So the book is organized into thirty chapters as the previous ones, right?

C: Yep. Yes.

S: Can you pick one, maybe your favorite, and tell me a bit about that?

C: I can tell you about Chapter 10. It is called “Stuck”. One of the kids gets her face stuck in a weird shape, and the whole chapter, all the people in the school try to help her get her face unstuck.

S: That is a weird one Caramel! The author comes up with so many weird ideas!

C: Yes. He also has a funny idea about how paper clips are made. Apparently it takes four people to make one paper clip.

S: Really?

C: No. But apparently that is what Ms. Jewls tells her students so they won’t lose the paper clips she gives them.

S: And this is the good teacher, right?

C: Well she is relatively kinder to them than the very first teacher from the first book. The kids like her a lot. And she likes them too.

S: Well, those are good qualities in a teacher.

C: Yep.

S: So if you were to describe this book using three words, how would you do it?

C: Funny, wacky, downright outrageous.

S: Hmm, I am assuming you mean that in a positive way?

C: Of course!

S: Okay, so do you think there will be a fifth Wayside School book?

C: I hope so.

S: I guess we can hope that the author will write another one some day. But in the meantime did you know that there are a couple puzzle books he wrote about the Wayside School?

C: Oh, I like puzzles!

S: I did see one of them before. They are cool puzzles. Maybe we will take a look one day.

C: That would be fun!

S: Okay Caramel. It is probably time to wrap up this review. What do you want to tell our readers?

C: Stay tuned for more book bunny reviews!

Caramel enjoyed reading Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom by Louis Sachar and hopes that there will eventually be more adventures about this wacky school in the near future. — Caramel enjoyed reading *Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom* by Louis Sachar and hopes that there will eventually be more adventures about this wacky school in the near future.

Marshmallow reviews Victory. Stand! Raising My Fist for Justice by Tommie Smith

Readers probably already know that Marshmallow enjoys reading graphic novels which are fictional, but she has occasionally also read memoirs or biographies written in graphic novel format and reviewed them for the book bunnies blog. (See, for example, her reviews of They Called Us Enemy by George Takei and The English GI by Jonathan Sandler and Brian Bicknell.) Today she writes about a 2022 book in this genre: Victory. Stand! Raising My Fist for Justice, by Tommie Smith, co-written by Derrick Barnes and illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile.

Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you like autobiographies or books about recent history, or if you want to read specifically about one of the consequential events in the history of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in the United States, then this might be the book for you.

Marshmallow’s Summary (with Spoilers): Tommie Smith is an American athlete, who is the first person to run 200 meters in under 20 seconds. In this book, Smith shares his experiences and retells the events leading up to and after his famous 1968 Olympics Black Power salute.

The narrative starts by showing the beginning of Smith’s Olympic finals race. Then we are shown his earlier life. As a young child, Tommie and his family were sharecroppers, meaning that they worked on land owned by someone else. Tommie did chores and picked cotton with his family. Even at a young age, Tommie could see injustice. He watched his parents and siblings work so hard everyday, toiling in the sun, while the white family who owned the land had a better, bigger house and did not have to work as much. However, things soon got even worse, and mechanized equipment and the drop in cotton prices took jobs away from sharecroppers. As a result, Tommie and his family moved to a labor camp in Stratford, California. There Tommie began to attend school regularly and “had to make sense of something that made no sense at all”. The white children in his class had several privileges, and the teachers saw them raise their hands, but they never seemed to see Tommie’s.

Everything changed, however, after a momentous race with his sister. Tommie realized that he could achieve anything, and he joined his school’s track team. This led him to becoming a star, winning almost every single competition he entered. By the time he graduated high school, he had accolades in multiple sports and several scholarship offers.

Tommie became a star athlete, and eventually, he made it to the Olympics. But he never lost his sense of justice and equality. He raised his fist at the 1968 Games to protest the racism and the many injustices in the United States at the time. Afterwards, there was a lot of push-back, and Smith faced a lot of difficulties as a result, but also a lot of people felt seen and heard. The book ends in the present, mentioning a few other athletes who have made similar protests after Smith in the intervening years.

Marshmallow is reading Victory. Stand! Raising My Fist for Justice, by Tommie Smith, written together with Derrick Barnes and illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile. — Marshmallow is reading *Victory. Stand! Raising My Fist for Justice*, by Tommie Smith, written together with Derrick Barnes and illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile.

Marshmallow’s Review: I really enjoyed reading Victory. Stand! Raising My Fist for Justice. It is very informative, and I learned a lot that I did not know before. I think it is very important to know and remember such acts of bravery and the people who committed them.

The drawings are really good. I think that they show movement, especially running, very well. I have reviewed historical graphic novels before, and I appreciated them too, but the drawing style in this one was unique and enjoyable. I also enjoyed the writing style of the author. The writing paired with the drawings made this a really good book overall.

Victory. Stand! Raising My Fist for Justice mentions horrible things that some people have done and has one image that is disturbing. Additionally, it does have some derogatory words. But the message of the book is vital. I think this is a book that every young bunny should read at least once. The story of Tommie Smith’s courageous life and his raised fist is a touching story that gives us hope for the future.

Marshmallow’s Rating: 100%.

Marshmallow rates Victory. Stand! Raising My Fist for Justice, by Tommie Smith, written together with Derrick Barnes and illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile, 100%. — Marshmallow rates *Victory. Stand! Raising My Fist for Justice*, by Tommie Smith, written together with Derrick Barnes and illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile, 100%.