About the Book: Danvers Blickensderfer is the biggest Gonzo fan you'll ever meet. His school reports are all about Gonzo, he has a Gonzo shirt for every day of the week, and he even aspires to be an amazing daredevil just like The Great Gonzo. When Danvers's audition for the local talent show fails and he looses out to the middle school boy band, Emo-Shun, Danvers thinks he's hit rock bottom. That night, Danvers goes to bed wishing he could be like Gonzo. The next morning Danvers discovers he's furry-and now turned into a Muppet and there's an internship open at The Muppet Theater. With his new Mupppet form, will he have a chance to meet and train with The Great Gonzo? And will The Muppets give Danvers a chance to perform at the talent show after all?
Sarah Teenlibrarian Says: I LOVE The Muppets. I still think of them as real and not puppets. I could watch The Muppets all the time and never get tired of them. So when I heard about this book, I knew I had to read it. And happily, it lives up to the humor I would expect from a book about The Muppets.
The style is "Wimpy Kid-esque" with drawings and text combined to tell the story. Part of the book are drawings and entries from Danvers and some of the drawings are from the author. Readers who like books with a mix of illustrations and text will most likely be interested and it might be a nice selling point for kids who might not be familiar with The Muppets. I do wonder how well known The Muppets are with tweens, but with the upcoming movie, maybe readers will know who Gonzo is.
I did like that the author didn't just include just the most popular Muppets. Sure, Miss Piggy, Kermit, Gonzo and Fozzy all make appearances, but so does The Electric Mayham Band, Sam the Eagle, Dr. Bunson Honeydew and Beaker, and Statler and Waldorf, (in a very hilarious way-they begin to heckle Danvers randomly throughout his day). As a Muppet fan, I appreciated that the cast was well rounded and there were lots of fun cameos from some of my favorites.
The humor is what you would expect from The Muppets and there are lots of jokes and puns and crazy happenings. Once Danvers becomes a Muppet himself, we are shown a Muppet filled world, much like you would see in The Muppet Movies. There are the regular Muppet characters, but there are also Muppets that fill Danvers world. The other Muppet intern is a pig, Danvers visits a school where there are humann students and frogs-and no one bats an eye.
There are some plotholes-like how exactly Danvers became a Muppet and the possible ways there are to fix his change. This part of the story seemed the weakest, but at the same time, the author knows that and makes fun of the random plot advances. There were things that weren't wrapped up in this book too, so I wonder if a sequel may be the works.
Tales of a Sixth-Grade Muppet is a book for Muppet fans old and new. Give this one to readers who like humor and silly antics as well as illustrated novel fans.
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