Chris Eliopoulos’s writing and illustration will make or break this book for you. His writing is very fluid and the dialogue, while not necessarily natural, is very delightfully playful and amusing. The illustration, on the other hand, is very natural and reminds me of the illustration from “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” which is always a fun read for kids. Comparing it to “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” though, I would consider the illustration in this book to be much more entertaining and evocative with a lot of little humorous details hidden in the background and a very good grasp on portraying action with such a limited style.

I did say that there could be some things that could “break” this book for you, though. Firstly, I’ll consider the relatively minor issue: the illustration. While the illustration is very fun to look at and finely detailed (at least for this particular art style), I don’t feel like the characters in the story are very memorable.This simply means that I would jump on anything written by Chris Eliopoulas, but I don’t see your kids waiting for the next Mr. Puzzle book. I have a feeling this is going to be a book that you would have to suggest to your kids to read or do a reading for them with a projector.

The much bigger issue is the writing and content of the writing. The comedic stylings makes me feel like this is targeted at grades 2-6, but there seem to be some questionable moral underpinning and the overall moral of each story is pretty vague. For example, there is a portion of the book where a kid has to get 100% on a quiz and the kid states that he is the only one in the school that can pull this off. While I like that the kid takes pride in his intelligence, I found it odd that we portray this kid as being alone in the school and not having other intelligent peers. It seems to encourage the sense of intelligence and superiority over others instead of encouraging cooperation with peers. Another example is when a group of women ogle Mr. Puzzle and say he’s a “real man’s man,” and the narrator later refers to the admirers as “lovely ladies.”  For this age group, I could see such dialogue to be a bit inappropriate, but not so much so that I would say it was bad. Just that you should be aware of the content before finding out who the book is appropriate for.

Additionally, and this is another double-edged sword, there are some words that I wouldn’t expect a young reader to know or really need to know, yet the rest of the writing is fairly simple and easy to read. As a result, I think 2nd or 3rd graders might have a hard time with such a book, but I think it makes this book wonderful for readers in later grades that are behind in their skills but are more mature. The writing and comedy could appeal to a broad audience and I think reading it out loud opens it up for all grades, but I think this book is best used as a beginner’s book for the higher grades, like 5th and above. The best part is that there are some words in here that are High School-level, like “polyvinyl acetate,” that will provoke the reader to ask for help. In a small reading group, I could imagine a short book like this being very helpful and efficient in getting your students interested and engaged.

submitted by T. Kalen Owens