Melonhead by Katy Kelly, illustrated by Gillian Johnson

[Originally published in 2009]

Melonhead is hilarious. Laugh-out-loud funny. Snort milk out your nose outrageous. I know my kids are going to love it!

Melonhead is your typical ten-year-old boy. Well, maybe not quite. First, he is an inventor! He is always inventing things, and sometimes they work! Then, he's a bit more accident-prone than some others we could think of. The whole tree and fireman thing - totally not his fault. Now the snake incident, well that was bad judgement. And then there's the whole roof-walking episode....

Melonhead's rather frazzled parents deal with him firmly and kindly and he has a supportive and realistic group of friends, strong characters on their own. Melonhead can be heedless and jump into things without thinking, but he always does his best to make things right!

Verdict: There's not so much gross humor that this will not appeal to parents or tidier siblings, and I think it will be a big hit with ten-year-old aficionadas of humor! It would also make a great read-aloud. Strongly recommended.

Revisited: This was never as wildly popular as I thought it should be and I eventually weeded some of the later books of the series, but the first title still goes out regularly and I recently replaced it with a prebound edition. It's still available in paperback and prebound and there aren't so many funny books that one can afford to let this one go just because it's a little older - it's still worth checking out!

ISBN: 0385734093; Published March 2009 by Delacorte; Borrowed from the library; Purchased for the library