Never Say Genius (Genius Files Series #2)

by Dan Gutman

Overview

Today is Coke and Pepsi McDonald's thirteenth birthday. Someone's out to make sure they never make it to thirteen and a half.

Racing across America,
the twins will nearly be
boiled alive
in a huge basket of french fries,
frozen to death
by soft-serve ice cream,
stampeded
in a wild stadium riot,
kidnapped
from a high-speed
roller coaster, and
worst of all
their parents think
they're totally joking!

Will they survive? Will they defeat Archie Clone? Will they be dropped out of a helicopter onto the tip of the Washington Monument? Will they ever say "genius"?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062099273
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	01/24/2012
Series:	Genius Files Series , #2
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Lexile:	720L (what's this?)
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Dan Gutman has always been a baseball fanatic. He played in Little League as a kid, and one of the first magazine articles he ever sold explained the science behind the spitball, the scuffball, and corked bats. When he thought about the T206 Honus Wagner—the most valuable baseball card in the world—he began to write honus & me, his first Baseball Card Adventure.

Dan is also the author of the New York Times bestselling Genius Files series, as well as the internationally bestselling My Weird School series.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 4–6—This sequel to Mission Unstoppable (HarperCollins, 2011) picks up right in the middle of the McDonald family road trip, but knowledge of that book is not essential as the narrator breathlessly recounts its highlights. It isn't long before the 13-year-old twins Coke and Pepsi find themselves in hot, er, oil. Yes. Even though they thought they dispatched the evil Dr. Warsaw in the last go-round, it seems that a new evil mastermind is pursuing them—Archie Clone, a kid genius with a penchant for hats and a resemblance to Archie of comic-book fame. As the family zigzags across the eastern half of the country en route to Washington, DC, they stop at a variety of oddball roadside attractions, where, if the twins don't find themselves in immediate peril, they find mysterious ciphers that need decoding. The various stops are real places, such as the Mustard Museum in Wisconsin and Hershey Park in Pennsylvania. Text boxes give instructions for finding the McDonalds' route in Google Maps, and black-and-white photographs and illustrations of the codes are included. Kids will appreciate the book for its nonstop action and goofball humor; character development is weak. Coke and Pepsi have the most clueless parents ever and the villains are strictly laughable. Buy for reluctant readers wanting something fast, or for fans of "The 39 Clues" (Scholastic).—Brenda Kahn, Tenakill Middle School, Closter, NJ

School Library Journal

Twins Coke and Pepsi McDonald squeak through numerous murder attempts at roadside attractions across the Midwest and on eastward. After berating readers who skipped the opener, Mission Unstoppable (2011), Gutman picks up his unconventional cross-country travelogue where he left off. He takes the RV holding his 13-year-old brainiacs and their oblivious parents from the National Mustard Museum in Spring Green, Wisc., to the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. Along the way, he pauses to suspend the sibs in French-fry cages over boiling oil outside the first McDonald's, imprison them in glass vats of soft-serve ice cream at Ohio's spectacular Cedar Point Amusement Park, lock them inside Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum (with a Megadeth track cranked up to mind-blowing level) and subject them to other perils. What's up? It seems aptly named bad guy Archie Clone and other assassins are out to kill, or perhaps test, them before they can join a secret organization of child geniuses and collect a huge reward. Tucking in small photos, instructions for following the route on Google Maps, facts about attractions large and small and mysterious ciphered messages, the author brings his confused but resourceful youngsters to an explosive climax and a shocking revelation that guarantees further adventures on the road back to the left coast. Nothing spices up a boring road trip like moments of extreme terror. (Adventure. 10-12)

Kirkus Reviews