Warning: Giant Frozen Woodchucks
If you find yourself trudging through Central Park this winter, be sure to keep an eye out for large pods, particularly any that have hatched – a telltale sign that frozen woodchucks from outer space are set to attack. In Dan Elish’s The Attack of the Frozen Woodchucks
After he spotted one of the giant woodchucks, Jimmy’s dad goes missing. The trouble is, Jimmy’s dad is a children’s book writer known for telling incredible stories and Jimmy isn’t sure what to believe. With the help of his best friend William H. Taft V, descendent of the president and someone set on the reality of space travel, Jimmy searches for clues to find his father. The boys quickly realize that the woodchuck threat is very real.
As I was reading, I kept thinking that the story was missing a girl character, though the first section includes Jimmy’s cool two-year-old sister Imogene. Enter Janice Claytooth, the bucktoothed weirdo at school who also happens to be a gifted rocket scientist. She is the boys’ ticket to outer space. Incredibly, she has converted the 5th floor of her family’s Upper West Side brownstone into a spacecraft with the durability and maneuverability of the Millenium Falcon. My missing a girl character was made up for ten-fold as the girls in the story turn out to be super-geniuses. (Don’t worry. The boys are cool, too.)
This book features all kinds of junior sci-fi goodies: incredible spaceships, planets with fields of cotton candy, outer space vikings, modded Gameboys, and a synthetic wood substitute called Plastawood. And did I mention giant frozen woodchucks? This is the perfect read for young readers over a frozen winter break.
