The Secret Shortcut

Rating:
Summary: Things that happen in the Secret Shortcut
Review: Have you ever been late for school ? Do you like the jungle?
If so I think the secret shortcut is a good book for you. It's about two boys named Wendell and Floyed that are always late for school. They tell fibs to their teacher about why they were late like almost being captured by space creatures, pirates loose in the neighborhood or a plague of frogs.
Will they get to school on time? You can find out the rest if you check out The Secret Shorocut by Mark Teague. I recommend this book because I think its a fun book to read .Its funnie how they imagine things. I hope you enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Things that happen in the Secret Shortcut
Review: I buy all of Teague's books due to the WONDERFUL pictures! The children in my church are spellbound when I read them at Children's time. The pictures go from edge to edge of each page causing much wide eyed wonder on the part of both adult and children alike!

This one is a very cute tale of imagination.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Pictures
Review: I buy all of Teague's books due to the WONDERFUL pictures! The children in my church are spellbound when I read them at Children's time. The pictures go from edge to edge of each page causing much wide eyed wonder on the part of both adult and children alike!

This one is a very cute tale of imagination.

Rating:
Summary: A Lucky Shortcut?
Review: If your child has a habit of being late for school, or if you find yourself running behind morning after morning, then Mark Teague's "The Secret Shortcut" may well prove helpful. The tale being told here is of Wendell and Floyd, two young friends who are always late for class. For some reason their teacher, Mrs. Gernsblatt, does not believe their stories about being late because of encounters with space creatures, pirates, and a plague of frogs. They try leaving earlier for school one morning, but that does not work and Wendell decides they are going to have to use his secret shortcut. The result is a real bungle through the jungle, aided and abetted by Teague's lush illustrations. Getting to school might never be so much fun ever again, although I could really use a story like this about a young girl who is always late, because I certainly have one of those.

Rating:
Summary: A Lucky Shortcut?
Review: Wendell and Floyd are the kids in this book. They are boys and they are seven years old. They lie all the time. They are always late for school. I like this book a lot and I think you should read it. I reccomend it to all the kids in my school -- hopefully they will not be late for school!

Rating:
Summary: Not Wild Enough
Review: Wendell and Floyd just can't seem to get to school on time. They offer completely outlandish excuses for being late to school (pirates, a plague of frogs!), but realize that they need to find a way to get there on time. Wendell (who, perhaps in homage to early comics, looks very much like one of the Katzenjammer kids of 1897) has an idea: He and Floyd will take "the secretest shortcut of them all...In fact, I invented it myself."

After scrambling though a thicket of vines, Wendell and Floyd find that their shortcut leads to a jungle! Two-page color spread shows the boys maneuvering past leopards, peacocks, and tapirs, rhinos, and snake; traveling a narrow path across "quicksand swamps and sleeping crocodiles," and then over a "deep, rocky gorge." Seeing that the shortcut is taking as long, if not longer, than the "longcut," the boys swing Tarzan-like from vines until the vines run out and they land in a muddy lake.

Although the wild diversion through the jungle is humorous and sometimes exciting, the book is a bit one-dimensional: They're traveling through a jungle, it's true, but they see typical jungle creatures and terrain. Some of the illustrations lacked depth because of insufficient shadowing, although I like the multiple perspectives from which Teague draws the boys. The conclusion, which comes quickly, is also a bit disappointing.

The book might have been more compelling if the boys had encountered as much of the improbable on the shortcut as they did on their usual route (for example, the plague of frogs). The monkey-mimicking vine swinging, ending with the disgruntled boys "in a giant puddle of mud" is a nice surprise, but a more ridiculous progression of events, perhaps told straight a la Daniel Pinkwater would have been funnier and more interesting.