Rise of the Balloon Goons

Rise of the Balloon Goons
The Notebook of Doom #1
by Troy Cummings

New York, N.Y. : Scholastic, c2013.

89 pages. Intermediate chapter book.

Alexander has moved to a new town. He immediately notices something strange about the town - there are a lot of those big bendy balloon guys around. The goofy attention-grabbers keep showing up in strange and unexpected places. And to make things even stranger, air starts disappearing from everything - tires, footballs, bouncy houses, etc... As Alexander tries to fit in at his new school - which is temporarily being held in a hospital - he is also trying to solve a mystery that seems to only be bothering him. Oh yeah, I guess you could say that the creator of a strange notebook full of bizarre monsters is bothered by them as well. The black and white illustrations are silly and will appeal to boys in 1st through 3rd grades. However, it is not my favorite of the Branches series.

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