Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

What do bloodsucking iguanas, aliens, and abandoned children have in common?  Anyone?  Anyone?  (Bueller?)

Stumped?

They are, of course, integral plot components of Look Out For The Fitzgerald-Trouts, which is the sort of book you’d get if you crossed The Swiss Family Robinson with The Boxcar Children and Pippi in the South Seas and made Roald Dahl the author.  It tells the tale of the Fitzgerald-Trout children, who have a complicated family tree and aren’t all actually related to each other, but are still very firmly brothers and sisters.  They live in their car and look after themselves; Kim (the oldest) is actually quite a safe driver (even if she needs stew cans attached to her shoes to reach the pedals).  As they grow, however, the car is starting to feel cramped, and so finding a house has moved up to the top of their to-do list.  How they do so is quite the ride, beginning in jail and ending past the bloodsucking iguanas.  (My personal favorite attempt may have been an aborted night in what was clearly IKEA under an assumed name.)

Make no mistake–this is a strange book.  It is, however, quite the tale; it drew me in quickly and kept me reading.  If your elementary schooler enjoys humorous adventure, he or she is certainly going to find it here!