Science

The first book in the Melonhead series, a boy tells of his misadventures in the Capital Hill neighborhood of Washington, DC. He is creative, silly, and sterotypically boy-ish (in a really fun way), as he attempts to come up with the best invention to win an inventor's contest.

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 boys! It would also make a great read-aloud. Strongly recommended.

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

The pictures and the writing reminded me of one of Roald Dahl’s books. I love his books and loved this one as well. Adam Melon, a.k.a. Melonhead is a very active boy. It seems that trouble was always finding him. The story starts out with a lot of excitement. Melonhead has his foot stuck in a hole in a tree limb. It seems the whole town has turned out. The longer his foot is inside the hole the more it sweats and swells. It takes the jaws of life to remove the foot from the hole. He is an inquisitive kid, who always asks questions. So why is it that he and his best friend Sam are having difficulty coming up with a reinvention for Mr. Santalices’ class? The book was full of all types of surprises. Some of them you are waiting for. You know the antic he has pulled is going to backfire. Something this are absolutely surprising. This was a wonderful book. It was light and fun to read. I would be proud to have this on my shelves at school. ( )

I picked up an advanced copy of Melonhead by Katy Kelly at a book sale and, although the book won't be released for three more days, I thought I'd rip right in:

Melonhead is not Adam Melon's real name, but it's the one he prefers. Adam is ten and trouble seems to find him, wherever he goes. He loves to invent things with his pal Sam so when the science teacher announces a reinvention contest.... Well, you can imagine Melonhead's excitement.

I was not familiar with Katy Kelly's work. I've been away from the elementary set for long enough to miss her Lucy Rose series, from which Melonhead (aka: Adam) is an offshoot. I really enjoyed Ms. Kelly's style. She reminds me of Beverly Cleary (how big of a compliment is that?). She uses a mixture of kidspeak and correct language to both engage and enlighten the reader. I'm surprised she's not been getting bigger buzz. I see her website on Random House is also a bit sparse, but you can read first chapters there. I think educators, parents and children's literature folks would be well served to investigate the Lucy Rose series (I dropped by Barnes & Noble to compare them with Melonhead).

Where the Lucy Rose series is more aligned to the 8-11 year old girl, Ms. Kelly is aiming the Melonhead series toward the same age boy. This is good, as several studies have shown this age as where we begin to lose male readers and where a gap in stories for boys begins to appear.

Review first published on Reading Rumpus ( )