Warning: this description has not been authorized by Pseudonymous Bosch. As much as he'd love to sing the praises of his book (he is very vain), he wouldn't want you to hear about his brave 11-year old heroes, Cass and Max-Ernest. Or about how a mysterious box of vials, the Symphony of Smells, sends them on the trail of a magician who has vanished under strange (and stinky) circumstances. And he certainly wouldn't want you to know about the hair-raising adventures that follow and the nefarious villains they face. You see, not only is the name of this book secret, the story inside is, too. For it concerns a secret. A Big Secret.
My Thoughts: Shhh!!! I can't say much about this book because it's a secret! Just kidding. I would share my thoughts on this children's book without revealing too much about the plot or characters.
This was a very entertaining book. I liked how the story was told by a narrator who kept speaking to the reader. He kept warning the reader not to read on, gave fascinating facts about certain words or topics, or would sometimes get off on a tangent on how he felt about the characters' situation. I read this book along with a student and it was exhilarating to see how the narrator's dark humor made my student eager to keep reading. It was very fun to read this aloud too because I found myself laughing at all the quirky things the narrator said.
The illustrations and chapters made reading this book a hoot. The illustrations held many of the secrets and themes of the chapters. My student and I would take a few minutes to analyze the drawings for each chapter trying to predict what it was about. The titles for each chapter were also comical. For instance, Chapter 13 was skipped because of the number 13. The title of this chapter explained why chapter 13 was skipped.
So in all, I enjoyed this book tremendously. I did not think that I would have been interested in reading the rest of the series but alas...I must know what will happen next. This book was a lot of fun and I highly recommend it to young readers. I rate it:
This book counts for the #ShelfLove Challenge.
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