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| Nightmare at the Book Fair | 
 enlarge | Author: Dan Gutman
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $15.99
Buy New: $8.00
You Save: $7.99 (50%)
New (34) Used (11) from $7.90
Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 29125
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.1
ISBN: 1416924388
EAN: 9781416924388
ASIN: 1416924388
Publication Date: July 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Trip Dinkleman hates to read. Hates, hates, hates it. All he wants to do is play lacrosse. So when the president of the PTA asks Trip to help her out on his way to tryouts, he is not happy. He is even more not happy when a stack of books tumbles onto his head and knocks him out cold. And he is even more not happy when he wakes up and has absolutely no idea where he is. Now all he wants to do is get home. But after encountering a haunted house, aliens, talking animals, and much, much more, he realizes getting home might be just a little bit harder to do than he thought.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 FUn, but could've done better September 16, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The premise is very fun and holds a lot of promise. A boy gets hit on the head with a box of books and jumps from book to book until he recovers. Sounds way cool. However, the book does not deliver. Some parts are a lot of fun and it seems the author is trying to squeeze some education in at some points, but many other chapters are just plain bland and the book really has very little plot.
I read this with my 8YO and then wished I'd read it alone first. This book has a lot of adult content and, unfortunately, it did not go over my kid's head and I had to explain things to him that I had not intended on covering so soon. Worse, he read a lot of it on his own and came back asking me stuff, so I had to figure out where it came from.
I'll give it 3 stars though, because it did have enough fun parts to make my son want to read it again - or maybe it was because he's an 8YO boy and he finds mature content very humorous.
Ok, but could have been so much more August 29, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The book is full of great ideas, but I think it falls short. Each chapter is a different type of book and a different story. For example, in chapter 2 it is a horror book, in chapter 4 an adventure story, and in chapter 8 the book is a historical fiction. Each chapter is like falling into the middle of a different story. If you like to know the beginning, middle and end of a story, you probably would not like this book.
Ambitious and funny, but doesn't quite work September 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Trip Dinkleman loves to play lacrosse and is on his way to tryouts when the president of the PTA asks him to help her move some books for the book fair. Trip hates reading and has no intention of going to the book fair, but reluctantly agrees to help out. He thinks it will only take a couple of minutes but when a stack of books falls on his head, he is off on a series of adventures. Along the way he will meet a crazy doctor, become involved in a murder mystery, turn into a girl, play in the super bowl, land on the moon, and much more.
"Nightmare at the Book Fair" is Dan Gutman's ambitious attempt at showing children the joys of reading. Except for the first and last chapter (which introduce and conclude the book) each chapter features a different type of fiction: horror; sports fiction; adventure; science fiction; humor; mystery; historical fiction; animal fiction; fantasy; and fiction for girls. The book has two "intermissions" - the first is called reference and is dictionary-like and contains a secret hidden message; the second contains a long poem about a boy who loved to read. The book also shows different types of speech such as alliteration.
"Nightmare at the Book Fair" is a fun book to read, even if it doesn't quite work. There are a lot of great aspects to the book - such as the last sentence of each chapter is the first sentence of the next chapter. While the book is for children, there are plenty of humorous things for adults as well - the football players are told to win one for the Lipper - and lots of puns (Dink travels through the Gates of Bill and the Woods of Tiger). There are a lot of Wizard of Oz references and a few good-humored jabs at the Olsen twins. While the book does a good job of showing the different types of fiction, some work better than others do. The mystery and historical fiction chapters were outstanding while the humor one didn't work for me (odd in a book that is generally very funny).
The one thing that kept me from totally enjoying the book is that there is no real plot outside of Dink getting hit on the head with the books. None of the chapters (outside of the first and last) advance the plot and none of the chapters has a real plot - Dink just moves from place to place in the book with no real cohesiveness. The book ends up feeling like a gimmick, not a novel.
"Nightmare at the Book Fair" is fun to read but doesn't quite work.
 My child LOVED it... I am a bit more weary September 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
My seven-year-old would give this book ten stars if he could. (He was actually VERY upset this wasn't a series as he wanted to read more!) My son is a very advanced reader (they have tested him at the junior high level) but he still is very much a fun loving kid with a wicked sense of humor. I often have trouble finding books that are socially/developmentally appropriate in content and that are challenging enough to keep his interest.
We are both a big fan of Dan Gutman's humor and love his "My Weird School" series of books and appreciate the silly laughs (although sometimes a bit inappropriate) and so I let my son read this book without reading it first. He finished the book in a night and begged for more. I was intrigued so when I sat down to read it I was surprised by some of the adult content. Obviously this was my mistake for giving it to him without checking it first.
I would definitely recommended this book for children 11+ but of course each parent knows their child best and can determine what is appropriate for themselves and their families. It is a quick read, very fast paced, and holds the reader's attention because of the fact that it is like a collection of short stories all in one book. However, because it is a series of intertwined short stories there is not deep character development or a rich story line. I view this book as a "fun" book that is meant to be read for enjoyment, like a comic strip, and is a good way to get reluctant readers to start reading or balance out the denser/thicker/heavier books for avid readers. My son calls books like these "dessert books," he doesn't read them all the time but enjoys them immensely when he does. Our family enjoys the brand of humor employed in Mr. Gutman's books but I would caution parents to pre-read this book before giving it to a child to make sure that you are okay with the content.
Silly, fun adventure with a bit of learning thrown in September 3, 2008
This is a difficult book to rate. It is almost as if the author was learning to write as he went because the book is better as it moves along toward the end than it is at the beginning. It is also a difficult book to rate because I am 48-years-old whilst the book is intended for ages 8-12. But the deal is, I read most books I am unsure about before I let my children read them to make sure they doesn't contain garbage I don't want them reading. Anyway...
The book starts with a kid, Trip Dinkleman, getting bonked on the head whilst helping to carry books to a school book fair. This is really annoying to Dinkleman because he doesn't like to read books to begin with, and the books landing on his head and knocking him silly is when his troubles and adventures begin. Dinkleman is transported though space and time and just plain goofy places and finds himself transformed into various people and animals, and he spends his time trying to figure out how to get home. There are humorous parts such as when Dinkleman is a cat talking with another cat who wants to take over the world, or when Dinkleman is a girl listening to other girls talk about things he considers silly--including their giddiness over a boy they all think is so cute, but Dinkleman knows is a jerk. At other times, the reader is taught a bit about global warming when aliens appear, or history when Dinkleman finds himself on a spacecraft as an astronaut headed to the first landing on the moon.
Some of the adventures, though, such as Dinkleman's time in a haunted house, don't seem to be so well developed and really don't add much to the story. These lesser-developed adventures are mostly grouped at the front of the book, so my first opinion of the book based on the beginning was lower than after I had finished the book. However, a child will probably find these bits of the story more entertaining than I did. Also, several times there are puns that the 8-12 year-old-reader probably won't "get," such as the time when Dinkleman finds himself transformed into a pro-football player and the coach tells the team that in honor of "Coach Lip" they should "Win this one for the Lipper." These types of "jokes" are kind of meaningless without knowledge of the intended pun. And sometimes the little adventure stories end before what would normally be the end (if that makes sense), but this appears to be an effort on the author's part to get the child reader curious enough to want to read more. On the other hand, sometimes the book gets a bit irritating with its jumping quickly from one situation to the next, and may confuse the age group it was intended for.
There are several fart-type jokes that parents probably won't think are funny, but kids probably will and a couple of times when there is violence or people are killed off without any sorrow shown by anyone, which may offend some parents. These situations are all presented in a silly sort of way, but I don't see how they benefited the story. The book really is quite humorous though, and even though an adult will probably quickly figure out what is going on, a child in the age group this book is written for will probably find the ending a surprise. There is a moral to the story that the author slips in without being preachy (not religiously preachy) about it.
In the end, this is a book filled with silly situations that I believe many children will likely find enjoyable to read. There is some unnecessary violence and adult situations that might annoy some parents (like me), and it isn't the best written book in the world--I don't think there is any hope it will ever be a "classic." In fact, it almost seems like the author was under contract to write a book, so he wrote this one without putting much effort into it. But I think this is an okay book for a child when he has had his fill of books that he is "supposed" to read and just wants something "fun" to read. With its large type and double-spaced lines, it is a quicker read than its 230 pages would lead to you to first believe. And with the moral of the story that we learn at the end, and the book's bits of history and biology and other "knowledge" stuff thrown in amongst the just plain goofy stuff, the child just might...uh oh, wait, I almost gave away the ending. Overall, this isn't a great book and I would only rate it a 2 star, but I goofed and checked the 3 star rating and now I can't change it. Really, if 3 is average, this book only deserves a 2.
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