Ratings11
Average rating3.5
From the Newbery Medal-winning author of The Giver and Number the Stars, comes a "hilarious" (Booklist, starred review) and wonderfully old-fashioned story about a mother and father who are all too eager to be rid of their four children . . . and four children who are all too happy to be rid of their parents.
The Willoughby's—Timothy; his twin brothers, Barnaby A and Barnaby B; and their little sister, Jane—are old-fashioned children who adore old-fashioned adventures. Unfortunately, the Willoughby parents are not very fond of their children, and the truth is that the siblings are not too keen on their parents either. Little do the Willoughby kids know that their neglectful mother and father are hatching an evil plan to get rid of them! Not to worry—these resourceful adventurers have a few plans of their own. But they have no idea what lies ahead in their quest to rid themselves of their ghastly parents and live happily ever after.
Featured Series
2 primary booksThe Willoughbys is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 2008 with contributions by Lois Lowry.
Reviews with the most likes.
This is horrible! Absolutely ghastly!
But I keep reading it with delight blended with horror and giggle every now and then...
And it ends very well :-)
Definitely worth reading :-)
Tim was a total dickface in the beginning of the book, and I almost tossed the book because of it. But I was reading the book not for the story but for the German practice, so I kept reading and things got much better. Overall it's an odd but fine book.
Some weeks ago I bought four books to read to the kids. This is the second of them. It's a lot shorter than the previous one, we read the whole thing over a span of nine evenings. It's pretty cute and has a nice sense of humor running throughout. It also does some shout-outs to some classics of young adult literature. When it mentioned The Secret Garden, for example, my two kids immediately understood the reference as we'd that one about a month and a half ago. This story is about four kids (of the title) whose parents are awful people who want to get rid of them. It's a bit short on conflict and the story resolves itself very neatly albeit fairly quickly. But what it lacks in plotting it makes up for in sly humor. It wasn't as rabidly received as The Mysterious Benedict Society, but the kids gave this story glowing reviews.
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