Pals in Peril, Whales on Stilts! By M.T. Anderson – In which I have a whale of a good time (hardy-har-har)

(I like this cover a lot) 

When my family and I were driving down from the suburbs in South Carolina to a Fort in Florida. It was a long drive, with lots of traffic and continuous driving. We listened to “The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish” and “The Wolves in the Walls” and “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” and a couple other short stories on tape. But, the two books we listened to the most were M.T. Anderson’s first two entries in the Pals In Perils, “Whales on Stilts” and “The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen” (We’ll cover that one later).

            I loved both of those books, although I didn’t get to continue the series until much later. Today we’re going to talk about Whales on Stilts, an adventure-sci-fi-throwback-meta-spy children’s book. These books are amazing.

The main characters, Lily (the shy girl), Katie (the less shy girl), and the delightful Jasper Dash, have a neat dynamic, despite (and possibly because of) the slightly nonsensical nature of their friendship. They don’t feel stilted (HAHAHAHAHA!!!!) in this first book, it’s just that they aren’t given a ton to do. “The Linoleum Lederhosen” is a throwback to children’s mystery novels with various allusions to Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and the Boxcar Children. “Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware” (the third book in the series) is love-letter to Indiana Jones’ style adventure stories, with the characters journeying through forgotten temples and fighting dinosaurs and gangsters.

(I like this cover even more though, even though it is lower resolution) 

“Whales” is less coherent. It is an allusion to superhero comics and spy thrillers with mad genius villains who use insane inventions to steal the world. The main villain of “Whales” is a disfigured, madman with a tragic backstory that thematically ties into him harnessing a small army of whales to destroy the small town of Pelt. The premise alone is amazing. But the plot itself ends up feeling a little sparse, with most of the book being a buildup to the whales attacking. Anderson never puts up any pretensions about what the mad scientist’s plot is, or who he really is. In fact, it’s part of the joke how obvious his plan is. That makes for great humor, but there’s a lot more tension in the later books in the series in which some there is typically a plot-twist at some point along the way.  

            The story is fun and hilarious in parts, but I do think I would recommend picking up one of the others before this and seeing if you like them. This is the obligatory introduction to the characters, that prepares you for what the rest of the series will be, but I don’t think it is required reading. So if you want to just jump to the Second Book, I would highly recommend it.

It was Good. 

I hope you enjoyed reading this and I hope you have a nice day!

Images were taken from www.mt-anderson.com for review purposes. You can purchase Whales on Stilts at Goodreads, Amazon, and Barnes