Mr. Chickee's Messy Mission

Locations
Call Number: Y Fiction / Curtis, Christopher
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown Kids Books 4-week checkout	Y Fiction / Curtis, Christopher	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Flint Future Detective Club members Steven Carter and his friends Russell and Richelle follow Russell's dog, Rodney Rodent, into a mural to chase a demonic-looking gnome, only to find the mysterious Mr. Chickee on the other side.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

funny and serious submitted by camelsamba on July 10, 2014, 4:30pm This book is laugh out loud funny at times, but also makes good points about friendship, persistence, and self-awareness. My 10yo son really enjoyed it (although some of the laugh lines were beyond his awareness of the world / pop culture), and wants to go to Flint to see the mural. [Note: he managed to see it ~6 months later. He did not fall in.] We went online to find pictures of the giant Vernor's mural, and I found one page where all these people were waxing nostalgic about how as kids they loved their parents to park in front of it, etc etc - which is ironic, given that the FEAR kids have of it was drummed into us as we read :-)

This is the second Mr Chickee book, and refers at times to some incident in the previous one (Bucko going over a dam), but I don't feel that we missed crucial aspects of this book by not having read the first. Some of it seemed superfluous (like parts at the beginning about the FBI(?) agent) but perhaps they are important to the series? And if Russell and Richelle's names were more different, it would be easier to read aloud :^)

A couple of examples of how rapidly the text can change from serious to silly:

Ms. Tiptip said, "... Through many years of flum-flubbing we've recognized that one of the more beautiful things about having ignorance erased is that it leads to many more questions being asked. You discover that knowledge, instead of causing you to be satisfied with what you've learned, causes you to hunger for more and more knowledge."
Russell said, "Hey! That sounds like how I feel if I eat just one Triple Chocolate Double Butter Extra Sugared Candy Delight---I want more and more. Mmm! Like the commercial says, 'Obesity isn't such a bad price to pay after all.' "
Mr. Chickee said, "Well . . . it's sort of like that, Russell."
He blinked rapidly again, then said, "You know what? It's nothing at all like that." .... [p 97]


Russell felt a glow in his heart. A spreading warmth. It was the fact that someone he'd admired for years admired him too. It was an acknowledgment of one of the strongest desires in human beings, the desire to be accepted. To be understood. To feel as though you are a part of a family.
It was that or the first twinges of severe heartburn caused by the incredibly filthy habit of eating bloodsucking parasites. [p 195]