The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm

Middle School    

11-year-old Ellie has never liked change. She misses fifth grade. She misses her old best friend. She even misses her dearly departed goldfish.

Then one day a strange boy shows up. He’s bossy. He’s cranky. And weirdly enough…he looks at lot like Elli’s grandfather, a scientist who’s always been slightly obsessed with immortality. Could this pimply boy really be Grandpa Melvin? Has he finally found the secret to eternal youth?

I would love it if my grandpa came back as a teenager. He died years ago and I really miss him. He was so funny and he did everything. He was always moving, doing every sport and activity. The thing I loved most about him was that he would say the funniest things. The man had no censor. Here are a few of my favorite grandpa quotes:

What he once said to a couple with a baby. “Oh, what a cute baby. For such ugly parents.”

Once walked up to someone in a restaurant and said, “Hey. You’re somebody, right?”

And my personal favorite, what he said the first time my family took him out for Chinese food. “I liked it but I never want to eat it again.” (I still use this one when I liked something, but don’t want to do it ever again.

I wish someone would make a sitcom on the concept of an old person turning back into a kid. I’d watch it.

Ellie’s grandfather was researching a jellyfish that, in the simplest term, is immortal. When I first read this book, I didn’t believe it. But then I saw an episode of Wild Kratts that featured the Turritopsis dohrnill, the immortal jellyfish. The jellyfish pretty much goes through a never-ending life cycle, regeneration if you will. Pretty cool huh?

This is just me talking but I think immortality would be a curse rather than a blessing. You would outlive everyone you love. What would be the good in that? That’s something that didn’t register to Grandpa Melvin. That he would have to start his life all over again.

Bow Wow (Bowser and Birdie Novel) by Spencer Quinn

Kids and Adults

A bull shark in the swamp? No one in the Louisiana town of St. Roch believes it at first, but when a local boy has a face-to-face encounter with the toothy monster, every big fisherman is called out for the hunt. There's a big cash bounty on the shark.

Sharp-eyed Birdie Gaux and her handsome dog Bowser can't help noticing that shark fever is causing some shady doings in town. For instance, where is Snoozy, the clerk who works at the Gaux family fishing store? He's the town's best fisherman, but suddenly he's missing. Is a rival bounty hunter behind Snoozy's suspicious disappearance? Or perhaps the marine biologist who said he'll do anything to keep the shark alive?

Birdie and Bowser are determined to find Snoozy and bring him home safe, but the job is more dangerous than they know. Bowser better practice his paddling: He and Birdie are heading for deep waters . . .

This book snuck up on me. Which is kind of weird because I keep an eye out for new books. I only learned about it when I was looking on Overdrive and found the audiobook.

I think this story was based on the Shark Attacks of 1916, I Survived did a book on the subject. It was said that the shark in question was most likely a bull shark, the most aggressive shark in the world.

For more of a review on the Bowser and Birdie series, check out Review #39, date September 3, 2016

I don’t know if Spencer Quinn will write another book for this series mostly because he’s already done Woof, Arf, and Bow Wow. What other dog sounds could he do? And now that I’m thinking about it, he might do Bark next.