Frank Parkin

This book is one of the best I have read this year. If you can find it, I would highly recommend it.
As for the story, it centers around James Krippendorf. He is a professor who has squandered all of his grant money and is forced to invent the Shelmikedmu tribe. This is where all similarities between the book and movie end. In the book, James receives a lucrative offer from Exotica, an "anthropological" journal which is tantamount to a magazine filled with the nude pictures one would see in National Geographic.

Krippendorf, to get some photos of Shelmikedmu females, seduces and photographs a number of women whom he becomes familiar with, including a babysitter and one of his son's classmates' mother. Throughout the entire book, while he is carrying out these schemes, his unruly children are creating a maelstrom of destruction around the house. Eventually, the children turn wild and start to live in a treehouse and adopt the Shelmikedmu's "customs". This leads to some interesting and hilarious complications.

The best part of this book by far is Krippendorf. The way he acts is reminiscent of Ignatius Reilly in "A Confederacy of Dunces" in that he sees nothing wrong with his behavior and nonchalantly accepts his childrens' overly unruly behavior. For example, when one of his sons shoots the neighbors' dog with a BB gun, instead of being mad, Krippendorf simply promises him a new gun if his son keeps quiet about it.

This book is definitely not for kids, due to its adult subject matter. Like a previous reviewer, I also find it curious that Disney would make a movie out of it.… (meer)