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The Curse of the Werepenguin Review and Craft!

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The Curse of the Werepenguin

Bolt Wattle is an orphan. He has spent most of his life at Having spent most of his life at the Oak Wilt Home for Unwanted Boys, all Bolt wants is to find his real family. One day Bolt learns that he has been adopted by a Baron! Baron Chordata lives in far off Brugaria and has sent for Bolt! Could this be the long lost family Bolt has been dreaming of? Nope. Not likely. When Bolt arrives in Brugaria he learns that the Baron is a short-tempered, tuxedo-wearing, 12-year-old BOY! Not quite what Bolt had hoped for. Things are about to get much worse, however. Bolt learns that the Baron isn’t your average 12-year-old in a tuxedo…he is a werepenguin. Yep…it’s a thing. To make matters even worse…the Baron bites Bolt and turns him into a werepenguin too. Half boy…half penguin…all the way scary! Bolt is determined to reverse this curse…but how can he do this alone? Maybe he doesn’t have to! Maybe, with the help of a rather zany cast of characters (a girl bandit, a crazy fortune teller, and a french-bread-wielding leader of a whale cult…told you they were zany) Bolt can reverse the curse and prevent the Baron from taking over Brugaria!

Our Thoughts

Have you ever read a book and immediately wished you could peek inside the authors head and see HOW the book came to be? In a non-invasive way of course! This was such a creative, zany, weird, and hysterical book that I am certain could only come from the most creative of minds.

I read this book to my 3 kiddos and it had us laughing out loud. Author Allan Woodrow wove humor throughout the majority of the pages! We especially enjoyed the jokes that traveled the length of the story, such as what happens when someone says Baron Chordata’s name…cue the screaming and fainting. The characters were all so zany and interesting…we especially enjoyed the “lowly” housekeeper and the french bread wielding leader of the whale cult…not to mention Blazenda, the cackling fortune-teller (See, I bet you want to peek inside his mind now, don’t you?) This was such an off-the-wall, fun read that left us craving fish sticks…;)

Let’s Get Crafty

One of our favorite things to do after we finish a book is to come up with some form of art project or craft project. We were inspired by the cover of the book and decided to make our own werepenguins. Being the crafty folks that we are, we decided that we would bust out our needle-felting supplies and create our very own crazy eyebrowed werepenguins. The little needle-felted penguins started out so cute…all fuzzy and black and white and harmless. However, once you add little red eyeballs, scraggly eyebrows, and scary horns…you end up with a pretty evil looking werepenguin…mission accomplished I suppose! My son flat out refused to make his evil, so we have 3 evil penguins and 1 cute fuzzy penguin. He couldn’t be swayed. It was such a fun project and we were super excited with how they turned out! For those of you who are crafty readers, we just used a simple needle felting kit, wool roving, and a styrofoam egg from the floral section at the craft store. Side note, the egg shape makes the perfect wobbly little penguin and doesn’t use as much wool!

werepenguin book and craft

AUTHOR BIO

Allan Woodrow is the author of many books including The Pet WarClass DismissedUnschooled, Field Tripped, and now, inspired by Dracula, old werewolf movies, Young Frankenstein, and an odd affection for fish sticks, The Curse of the Werepenguin. When Allan isn’t writing, or noshing on breading-coated seafood, he’s often presenting to schools, libraries, and conferences. You can learn more about Allan at allanwoodrow.com

 

If you are looking for a fun, funny, wildly absurd, and out of the ordinary read, then I absolutely suggest you give The Curse of the Werepenguin a try!

The Curse of the Werepenguin released on August 13th, 2019 and is published by Penguin Random House (the irony is not lost on me). You can grab a copy here.

Thank you so much for Penguin Random House for providing me with an Advanced Copy of this book for review. All thoughts and opinions are 100% my own!

 

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