The tour is in partnership with The Children’s Book Review and Amberjack Publishing.
Sometimes it's a challenge to get into the minds of middle-grade readers, but Eric Bower has succeeded in this book about W.B. (Waldo) Baron, a middle-grade boy who has started a new school year in the classroom corner wearing a dunce cap. He has just read some of his summertime adventures to his class, and his teacher is convinced he's lying.
Only those of us who have read this whole story realize that no matter the outrageous shenanigans W.B. told, it is true life for a young boy. At first, I too wondered how a boy whose family lives in the horse-drawn carriage age, whose parents, world-class inventors, can possibly already be "flying" an Air Oh! plane, shrinking things, and using a submarine to find treasure with a pirate's curse? Then I believe I understood. Young readers' inner imaginations are like this. They wish they could have these crazy adventures instead of their often-boring daily lives of school and soccer, music lessons and home. Yes, a good life, but not even close to as exciting as Waldo's.
In the corner, Waldo manages to whisper about his summer to a group of mice, also in a corner home and we readers get to listen, too. There are those unique inventions (a steam-powered submarine!), secret meetings, and a rude monkey one this journey.