Eleven-year-old Arthur Whipple, one of 13 children in the famously record-breaking Whipple family, is not the fastest. Or the slowest. Or the shortest or tallest or anything-est.
In fact, the "extraordinarily ordinary" Arthur is well on his way to a record-breaking number of failed attempts at world records, painstakingly logged by his ever-disappointed father. It seems Arthur will never be immortalized in Grazelby's Guide to World Records and Fantastic Feats: even as his older brother Simon is attempting "Longest Continuous Time Playing an Accordion" in the bedroom next door, Arthur can't even manage "Longest Time Without Sleeping." Still, as a rash of disasters plagues the Whipples--from a near-deadly giant French toast incident to a violently explosive birthday cake--it is Arthur who steps up with record-breakingly good instincts. The story of his courage and "hopelessly decent" conduct in the face of "bitter failures, terrifying encounters, and horrific catastrophes" will have readers cheering for the likable underdog.
While the premise and plot of this action-packed novel are as wild, elaborate and appealingly ridiculous as rhinoceros polo, the finely wrought, deadpan-funny narrative never strays too far from the unlikely hero and his struggle for acceptance. Along the way, readers will learn about curiosities from leap years to penny-farthings as they contemplate the existence of undomesticated hamsters, whether clowns really are evil, and how the heads of the World's Smallest Moose and the World's Largest Mouse might be roughly the same size. A superlatively giddy debut. --Karin Snelson, freelance writer and children's book editor