Jody Feldman Book Title: The Gollywhopper Games Publication Date: March 4, 2008 Publisher: HarperCollins/Greenwillow ISBN: 978-0-06-121450-9 (Tr) 978-0-06-121451-6 (Lb) Author's Website: http://www.jodyfeldman.com

Description of Book:

Gil Goodson's future happiness depends on winning Golly Toy and Game Company's ultimate competition. If Gil wins, his dad has promised the family can move out of Orchard Heights -- away from all the gossip, the false friends, and bad press that has plagued the Goodsons ever since The Incident.
 
Gil has been studying for months. He thinks he knows everything about Golly's history and merchandise. But does he know enough to answer the trivia? Solve the puzzles? Complete the stunts? Will it be more than all the other kids know? Gil's formidable opponents have their own special talents. He must be quicker and smarter than all of them.
 
The ride of Gil's life is about to begin.

About the Author:

Jody Feldman can’t remember a time she didn’t want to write. And that’s a big, fat lie. Truth?

Jody always found writing to be a chore. Hard. Boring. But at some point between the day she entered the University of Missouri as a psychology major and the day she graduated from their Journalism School, she’d turned into a writer.

During her advertising career she’s written about shoes, movies, fluid fertilizer, books, sewing machines, beer, leather cleaner, street banners, rodeos ... even words for a giant fortune cookie. She’s worked in a department store, a factory, a pre-school and spent one day training to sell products door to door but decided she’d rather eat a door.

Jody might have liked to become a treasure hunter, a codebreaker, a movie director, an artist and an inventor. But the most exciting part about writing is, she can explore all those occupations and adventures with the characters in her books.

Jody Feldman lives and plays with her family in St. Louis, Missouri.

Excerpt:

Reviews:

The Gollywhopper Games is ...

*On the 2009-2010 Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List

*The Midwest Booksellers Association 2008 Choice Awards Honor Book for Children's Literature

*An ALA/YALSA BBYA Nominated Book 

*A Booksense Pick, Spring 2008

*A Booksense "Book to Watch"

 

From Booklist: 

"Feldman includes truly despicable villains, unexpected kindnesses, and a surprise ending ... Nonstop action, appealing pencil illustrations, and increasingly difficult brainteasers will keep readers engaged, and readers will pull out paper and pencil to try and solve the puzzles as they work through the book." 

 

From Publishers Weekly:

"Indeed, the appeal of the book lies in the puzzles, which involve unscrambling clues hidden in rhyming verses and then tackling various stunts (obstacle courses, mazes, scavenger hunts) that get increasingly difficult as the field is winnowed."

 

From School Library Journal:

"... the appealing premise of a competition within a toy company headquarters recalls Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Knopf, 1964), and the puzzle solving may appeal to fans of Trenton Lee Stewart’s The Mysterious Benedict Society (Little, Brown, 2007) or Blue Balliett’s Chasing Vermeer (Scholastic, 2004) ... "

 

From Kirkus: 

"Fun in the style of Eric Berlin's The Puzzling World of Winston Breen (2007), readers can count on amazing special effects a la Roald Dahl's Charlie books, and a straight arrow hero who has the extra motivation of being an outcast due to his father's supposed sins. Plain good fun for puzzle addicts, with plenty of action and the suspense only a ticking timer can offer."