Matt Brennan

This is a back and forth, all over the place, flip those pages adventures, which keeps the fingers moving in the same excited pace as the adventure itself.

Tuckie and Huggs discovers an odd device in the garden. A sudden pull of the handle and off they go through time! Many adventures await them as they zip and zap and zip again. Where they'll land next is as unexpected as where they had last been.

This is an original, time travel story, which takes a picture book format but is definitely for middle grade readers. The entire thing is done in a comic book form, with the text snuggled into the illustrations. But it's the flip-flop, back and forth which gives this book its original flare. While the story starts on the beginning page....kind of...it then quickly sweeps to the middle and continues frontwards and backwards from there.

In a way, it reminds of the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books, but in this one, there aren't any choices to be made. Instead, the story continues by following colorful arrows and lines through the pages until the followed 'path' ends in a story box. The reader finds out what happens next before zipping away and following the next arrowed and colored line again through the pages until landing somewhere else. About halfway through the story...and by story, I don't mean physical book...a time vortex hits and colored paths shoot back and forth in a frenzy. The reader has to take care to stick on the right color path in and out of the spin so they can continue the story. Sometimes, the color lines get a little confusing (there are quite a few to follow along the bottoms and tops of the pages), but as long as the reader pays attention to what they're doing, they'll get through.

The adventure itself is fun. There's not really a message to the entire thing, nor is there much of a plot outside of the excitement of meeting dinosaurs, aliens, and all sorts of suspenseful situations. But that's more than enough. It's a fun read, very original, and worth a try, especially for those more reluctant readers who get bored when reading a 'simple' book.

I received a complimentary copy and we had so much fun with it that I wanted to leave my honest thoughts.… (meer)