Tales of a (Formerly) Reluctant Reader: The Adventures of Ook and Gluk by Dav Pilkey

Ook & Gluk are two cavemen who live in a town called Caveland, OH. It is the year 500,0001 BC.  They are normal boys who get in trouble, especially with Big Chief Goppernopper.  One day, an evil corporation lead by J.P. Goppernopper (the Chief’s relative from the future) is discovered trying to steal Caveland’s important resources.  J.P. Goppernopper comes from the year 2222.  All of the natural resources including trees, oil & water are either used up or polluted. Goppernopper Enterprises is going back to the past to steal all the trees & water & oil from the cavemen. The two Goppernopper’s join forces, turning the citizens of Caveland into slaves for their evil mission.

Ook & Gluk are transported into the future through a portal and race to escape from the two Goppernoppers. Master Wong, owner of a Kung-Fu school, lets the two cave boys hide in his school. He agrees to train them to help them defeat the evil Goppernoppers.  He won’t give the boys their black belts, though, until they can tell him who the greatest man is.  It takes the boys seven years to pass this test and finally they are able to battle the evil Goppernopper Enterprises & save their cave town.

But when they return to Caveland, it no longer looks like it did before.  The people are still slaves and all of the beautiful trees are gone. Eventually Ook & Gluk remember what Master Wong taught them and Caveland is returned to normal.

John’s Review: I liked this book because it has a lot of great action, it’s very funny & because of the kung fu!  I’m a black belt so this really interests me!  I also liked it because it talked about how important our natural resources are and how we should protect & preserve them. The drawings were great & pretty hilarious!

Jenn’s (Mom’s) review: I, too, liked the lesson learned about preserving one’s natural resources and the book overall.  However, one think that I didn’t particularly enjoy were the intentional misspellings in the book. Granted, the book is about two cave boys who speak what the book calls “Cavemonics.” However, I think this could have been relayed without the misspellings, like “surfice” instead of “surface” and “dedicashen” instead of “dedication.”

I think misspellings like this are detrimental to young readers. John, in particular, has difficulty with spelling.  When he started reading this book, he was thrown off a bit by the errors in spelling.  We had a long talk about why the words were spelled incorrectly and that he should still picture the word correctly spelled in his head.   We even made an activity of it; going through the book and correcting all the misspellings.

That said, John did enjoy the book and it got him excited about reading.  He read this book in no time because the story was interesting to him. Therefore, I would recommend this book, but would highly encourage parents to discuss the grammar & misspellings with their child at some point in the reading of the book.

Thanks to Scholastic, I have a pretty phenomenal giveaway package!

Give the gift of reading to your child this holiday season! Scholastic books make the perfect stocking stuffer for any child on your list.  I have a HUGE prize pack filled with the most popular children’s books in the marketplace to offer one lucky reader! Titles include CAPTAIN SKY BLUE, IT’S CHRISTMAS DAVID, OOK and GLUK as well as TONY BALONEY, ODIOUS OGRE and I SPY CHRISTMAS A CHRISTMAS TREE!

Pretty exciting, right? To enter, please fill out the form below.  Open to US mailing addresses only. Winner will announced on Friday, November 26th.  Good luck to all who enter!

This entry was posted in 7-10 years of age, 8-12 years of age, Kid-Lit/Middle Grade, Scholastic, Tales of A (Formerly) Reluctant Reader and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

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