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The Genius Files #1
The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable
Coke and Pepsi McDonald didn't want to jump off a cliff.
They didn't want to get hit by poisoned darts from blowguns either. And they certainly don't want to get locked in their burning school, thrown into a pit at the top of a sand dune, or drowned in a vat of liquified SPAM. But what are you supposed to do when you're being chased across the country by your insane health teacher and two guys in bowler hats who are trying to kill you? One thing's for sure, it'll be a snap for Coke and Pep to write their essays on "How I Spent My Summer Vacation."
Want to join in the fun? Fire up the old Google Maps and follow the McDonald twins as they get chased from the Pez museum to the largest ball of twine in the world.
Watch out for the Frisbee grenades
They didn't want to get hit by poisoned darts from blowguns either. And they certainly don't want to get locked in their burning school, thrown into a pit at the top of a sand dune, or drowned in a vat of liquified SPAM. But what are you supposed to do when you're being chased across the country by your insane health teacher and two guys in bowler hats who are trying to kill you? One thing's for sure, it'll be a snap for Coke and Pep to write their essays on "How I Spent My Summer Vacation."
Want to join in the fun? Fire up the old Google Maps and follow the McDonald twins as they get chased from the Pez museum to the largest ball of twine in the world.
Watch out for the Frisbee grenades
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
550 people are currently reading
3578 people want to read
About the author
Dan Gutman
372 books1,040 followersThe author of over 80 books in a little over a decade of writing, Dan Gutman has written on topics from computers to baseball. Beginning his freelance career as a nonfiction author dealing mostly with sports for adults and young readers, Gutman has concentrated on juvenile fiction since 1995. His most popular titles include the time-travel sports book Honus and Me and its sequels, and a clutch of baseball books, including The Green Monster from Left Field. From hopeful and very youthful presidential candidates to stunt men, nothing is off limits in Gutman's fertile imagination. As he noted on his author Web site, since writing his first novel, They Came from Centerfield, in 1994, he has been hooked on fiction. "It was fun to write, kids loved it, and I discovered how incredibly rewarding it is to take a blank page and turn it into a WORLD."
Gutman was born in New York City in 1955, but moved to Newark, New Jersey the following year and spent his youth there.
Gutman was born in New York City in 1955, but moved to Newark, New Jersey the following year and spent his youth there.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 694 reviews
May 22, 2015
Condescending author writing about pretentious "genius" kids (who really show no signs of "geniusness" the entire book) who were recruited to be anti-terrorism agents. They travel across the country with their parents with constant reminders that kids are brilliant and adults are idiots on their way to a wedding. At each stop the boy twin spouts his knowledge of the place they're at (because having a photographic memory apparently makes you a genius and of course he's seen something about EVERY place they stop, convenient, no?), they almost get killed, they don't die, they lie to their parents about what happen, their parents (because they're idiots, as are all adults) swallow each unbelievable lie, and the process is repeated at the next stop. The poor girl twin (who is a genius because she's good at puzzles) has no personality beyond being her brother's twin. Of course the boy twin doesn't have anything but obnoxiousness going for him so I suppose she's not missing out on much. Oh, and their names are Coke and Pepsi McDonald. When they visit the SPAM museum the father makes a wry comment that of course there is no entrance fee because the whole museum is a commercial and SPAM should be paying them to go to the museum. That's how I feel about this book. I should have been paid to read this boring, predictable, far-fetched commercial for Coke, Pepsi, Google, McDonald's, SPAM, Pez . . . My review is more exciting than the book was.
April 26, 2017
Ugh. The story was hard to believe and never seemed to really explain itself. The kids jumped from one perilous situation to another (and never learned to stop going into situations with a stranger and without their parents). I read this with my 10 year old and he liked it a little bit so we started reading the 2nd book, but it was more of the same so neither of us wanted to finish it.
March 13, 2023
Love another Dan Gutman series to get my son excited about!
July 23, 2011
I want to share with you the first page as it's just a bang-up opening and you know how much I love great openings that hook the reader from the start. Especially when they are followed up with an exciting and engaging novel that is very funny. Read the next paragraph and just try not to get hooked (Go ahead. I'll wait):
There were ten items on Coke McDonald’s to-do list on June 17, but JUMP OFF A CLIFF was not one of them.
CLEAN OUT MY LOCKER was on the list.
PICK UP MY YEARBOOk was on the list.
GET BIRTHDAY PRESENT FOR PEP was on the list.
PACK FOR SUMMER VACATION was on the list.
But nothing about jumping off a cliff.
And yet, oddly enough, jumping off a cliff was the one thing that Coke McDonald was actually going To Do on June 17.
Not only was he going to jump off a cliff, but first he was going to push his twin sister, Pepsi.
Now, before we get to the cliff-jumping part of the story, maybe I’d better explain something. Why would anyone in their right mind name their children Coke and Pepsi?
How sweet an opening is that? Obviously, starting a story with your characters about to jump off a cliff is exciting stuff. The only way to make it more exciting is to put a river of alligators beneath the cliff and/or bamboo spikes:) What’s interesting here is that Gutman isn’t actually showing us his characters jumping off a cliff just yet. He will, of course, as not to would be like offering us a bowl of candy and then withdrawing it when we reached for some. But what directly follows the passage you just read is five pages of exposition. Coke and Pepsi don’t actually jump off the cliff until the last page of the second chapter.
Now don’t get me wrong. The exposition is well written and funny and combined with the opening lines, it sets the tone for the very humorous, tongue-and-cheek story that we’re about to read. One passage is so entertaining, I’m going to share it with you in a moment. And characters’ being named Coke and Pepsi McDonald does require a little explanation. But exposition is exposition and the promise of a cliff jump is the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. The pages fly by as the reader rushes to get to the bit about the cliff. Although, as I’ve said, these pages are by no means something the reader wouldn’t enjoy without the hook, they’re certainly made better for it.
And to be fair, the first eleven pages of chapter two are catching us up on what’s happened to force the McDonald twins to jump off a cliff. Their jumping off a cliff means nothing to us until we know just a little bit about them to care that they might die and the bare minimum explanation as to why they would want to jump off a cliff. If these kids are just a couple of reckless cliff jumpers, who cares. But if they are being chased by men who want to kill them and then by a woman carrying an exploding Frisbee who gives them wingsuits with which to glide off the cliff like squirrels, that’s a quite a different matter.
Chapter three has the twins gliding through the air and fortunately I recently viewed Transformers 3 and so could picture this quite clearly in my mind (there are wingsuits as well as robots in Michael Bay’s cinematic triumph, worth noting for any Academy members reading this). Actually, for better or for worse, I’m betting a fair amount of readers will be thinking of Transformers 3, which is simply a matter of serendipitous release dates. But even if readers aren’t thinking of the silver screen, Gutman has written a high octane opening that gives the reader enough of what they want that they’ll be satisfied for a few more chapters of plot and character until a school is burned down.
And by now, Esteemed Reader, you know just what sort of book you’re getting into. Someone is trying to kill Coke and Pepsi McDonald because, wait for it, they scored extremely well on standardized tests and have therefore been selected for a top secret government program known as The Genius Files. After witnessing the destruction of the pentagon on September 11, 2001, Dr. Herman Warsaw has decided that the only answer to the world’s problems is to enlist the genius children across the United States and to send them on top secret missions that not even their parents can know about. But could the inventor of such a crazy scheme be, in fact, crazy himself? Dum, dum, dum! But I’ve said too much.
What alarmed me just a little was that there is a lengthy description of the events of September 11th, 2001, in Chapter 5, even going so far as to counter the popular conspiracy theory that a plane did not actually crash into the pentagon. Doesn’t everyone already know all that stuff? I don’t want to spend much time on this subject as it’s just a detail of the overarching plot, but it occurred to me that it’s coming up on ten years and therefore there are children who will be reading this book who won’t remember that day, but who may have seen YouTube conspiracy videos and who will need these details spelled out for them. There’s nothing profound here beyond the Ninja’s realization that he’s getting older, time is passing, and a new generation is scheming to rise up and replace him one day. Still, it’s a testament to Gutman’s knowing his reader that he accepts they may need to be caught up to follow the story.
Okay, back on track. The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable is a good start for what promises to be a fun and exciting series (there’s an excerpt from Book 2 at the end, but don’t read it before hand as it totally spoils Book 1). I’m looking forward to more adventures with Coke and Pepsi and I’ll bet you will too. It’s just a good set-up. What kid wouldn’t like to have a secret double life as a government operative? And Gutman is funny while he keeps the thrills coming, ensuring a good time lies ahead.
And now I have three points I want to make about craft and some lengthy passages to share and we’ll call it a review. My first point I’m going to let Gutman make for me:
Ordinarily in a story, this is where the author tells the readers what the main character—or, in this case, characters—look like. The author might on for page after page, painting a glorious word picture of Coke’s and Pep’s hair, their faces, the way they walk and talk, the way they dress, and so on.
But you know what? Who cares? Do you really care what Coke and Pep look like? Does it really matter to you. It’s boring. By the time you get to Chapter Three, you will have forgotten the description you read back in Chapter One, anyway. Coke and Pep are twelve-year-old twins, about to turn thirteen in a week. Okay? Nuff said. That’s all you need to know right now.
You really want to know what they look like? Look at the cover of this book. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let’s move on to the good part—the part where Coke and Pep go over the cliff.
What he said. I don’t really have anything to add.
The second thing I want to draw your attention to is that The Genius Files is a series being written for today’s kids. It’s anyone’s guess as to which books will end up being new classics and which won’t and much of it is beyond the author’s control. After all, Bridge to Terabithia is very much a story of its time and yet it remains popular today. Too many writers avoid specifically nailing their book to the time in which it is written in hopes of giving the novel longevity. Even the Ninja was advised to cut President Obama from his hopefully soon-to-be-published manuscript for this very reason.
But adult writers don’t do this. Under the Dome by Stephen King (reading it again because it ruled) makes use of Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper, whom readers twenty or thirty years from now might not know, and James Patterson opens many of his Alex Cross novels with a review of movies or books that just came out (somebody get Patterson a blog). The Genius Files never states a date, but Gutman does provide links to webpage’s for readers to verify information. How long those links will be good is anyone’s guess. But in the meantime, it’s an innovative way to further involve young readers and to make a book a part of their overall interactive media experience.
The McDonalds are on a trip across America and Gutman explains to young readers how they can go online to Google Maps and chart their journey. It’s a good idea and a way to create an interactive, multimedia experience without investing in a website or other online campaign. The Genius Files may go on to become a classic, it may not. There’s no way to know. For all we know, Harry Potter may yet fizzle out and future readers will have never heard of him. They may not, and this is truly frightening, even know who Batman is (I could never live in such a world). After all, it’s a comic book, not The Odyssey (Superman, on the other hand…). Although, for the record, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns is an American epic I hope will linger after our empire has collapsed.
Gutman isn’t particularly worried what readers one hundred years from now will think about The Genius Files. He wants to hook today’s readers and he’s written a book for them. Should a classics edition be released in one hundred years with updated links, gravy, and there’s nothing preventing future generations from doing it. But Gutman isn’t sacrificing today’s readership in the hopes of being discovered after his death, which seems to be the strange strategy of a number of writers.
My third and final point is that Gutman slips in a bit of editorial now and again, but he does it without interrupting the story. No one wants to read a writer’s manifesto. We don’t really care what the writer’s political beliefs may be. We just want a good story. Writers who include entire chapters of idealogical diatribes will likely lose readers (we’re looking for fiction, not Bill Maher’s New Rules). But a writer who gives us a good story well told can get away with slipping a few quick shots in now and again, so long as he does so sparingly and without halting the narrative.
For example, the twins themselves are named Coke and Pepsi McDonald in “an ironic statement about how corporations control people’s lives.” After all, they have to be named something, and Gutman knows as well as you and I do that sooner or later we are going to have to fight back against big business to avoid being shills and slaves, so why not fan the flames of revolution just a little? Heck, as a writer of a great adventure, you’ve got the attention of young readers, which is what you wanted in the first place, so why not tell them a little of what you want to say? So long as you keep it in the story and pick your moments, that’s a writer’s privilege.
And having Pep respond in conversation with her father: “But wasn’t Manifest Destiny just an excuse to steal the land and kill the Indians who were living in North America long before we did?” asked Pep. “Wasn’t it almost like genocide?” doesn’t alter the tone of the story, nor does it interrupt it. There’s a line and the closer you come to crossing it, the more readers you risk alienating. Still, Gutman delivers on an exciting adventure and therefore earns a few asides. And why not provoke the thoughts of young readers with an alternate version of Manifest Destiny than the official story they may have read so long as you’re quick about it? Isn’t provoking young minds the whole point?
As always, I’ll leave you with some of my favorite excerpts from The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable:
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Chances are you’ve never fallen off a cliff. If you had, you probably wouldn’t be reading this right now. Because you would be dead.
But have you ever jumped off a high diving board? Have you ever dropped into a steep water slide or a half pipe? Have you ever been on a really high roller coaster?
Well, forget it. Falling off a cliff is nothing like any of those experiences. You still have no idea what the McDonald twins were going through.
Coke had a theory to explain grown-ups, as he did for most things in life. In his view, babies are born with a specific number of brain cells, which waste away and die off as people get older. So by the time they reach thirty—and certainly by the time they reach forty—most of their brain cells are gone. This explains why grown-ups do and say the things they do.
To back up his theory, in third grade Coke did a school research project involving music. He made a list of the greatest composers in history, from Beethoven to the Beatles. Then he tracked when they wrote their best music.
Irving Berlin wrote his first hit song—“Alexander’s Ragtime Band”—when he was just twenty-three years old. The Beatles made Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, their most innovative album, when John Lennon was twenty-seven and Paul McCartney was twenty-five. Beethoven started going deaf at thirty-one. Mozart was composing minuets at age five and was dead at thirty-five.
Almost as a rule, composers created their finest work in their twenties. There was a severe drop after the age of thirty. This, to Coke, was proof that the human brain deteriorates by the time people become parents. Which explains why parents are so weird. They’re essentially operating with an empty skull filled with dead brain cells.
And if his family wanted him to drive hours out of his way to Minnesota to see another @#$%^** ball of twine, he decided, then, @#$%^**, he would drive them there. That's the kind of a man he was.
Please excuse the language. This is just what was going through Dr. McDonald's mind.
To read an interview with author Dan Gutman or to read interviews with other authors and literary agents, log onto my blog at www.middlegradeninja.blogspot.com
There were ten items on Coke McDonald’s to-do list on June 17, but JUMP OFF A CLIFF was not one of them.
CLEAN OUT MY LOCKER was on the list.
PICK UP MY YEARBOOk was on the list.
GET BIRTHDAY PRESENT FOR PEP was on the list.
PACK FOR SUMMER VACATION was on the list.
But nothing about jumping off a cliff.
And yet, oddly enough, jumping off a cliff was the one thing that Coke McDonald was actually going To Do on June 17.
Not only was he going to jump off a cliff, but first he was going to push his twin sister, Pepsi.
Now, before we get to the cliff-jumping part of the story, maybe I’d better explain something. Why would anyone in their right mind name their children Coke and Pepsi?
How sweet an opening is that? Obviously, starting a story with your characters about to jump off a cliff is exciting stuff. The only way to make it more exciting is to put a river of alligators beneath the cliff and/or bamboo spikes:) What’s interesting here is that Gutman isn’t actually showing us his characters jumping off a cliff just yet. He will, of course, as not to would be like offering us a bowl of candy and then withdrawing it when we reached for some. But what directly follows the passage you just read is five pages of exposition. Coke and Pepsi don’t actually jump off the cliff until the last page of the second chapter.
Now don’t get me wrong. The exposition is well written and funny and combined with the opening lines, it sets the tone for the very humorous, tongue-and-cheek story that we’re about to read. One passage is so entertaining, I’m going to share it with you in a moment. And characters’ being named Coke and Pepsi McDonald does require a little explanation. But exposition is exposition and the promise of a cliff jump is the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. The pages fly by as the reader rushes to get to the bit about the cliff. Although, as I’ve said, these pages are by no means something the reader wouldn’t enjoy without the hook, they’re certainly made better for it.
And to be fair, the first eleven pages of chapter two are catching us up on what’s happened to force the McDonald twins to jump off a cliff. Their jumping off a cliff means nothing to us until we know just a little bit about them to care that they might die and the bare minimum explanation as to why they would want to jump off a cliff. If these kids are just a couple of reckless cliff jumpers, who cares. But if they are being chased by men who want to kill them and then by a woman carrying an exploding Frisbee who gives them wingsuits with which to glide off the cliff like squirrels, that’s a quite a different matter.
Chapter three has the twins gliding through the air and fortunately I recently viewed Transformers 3 and so could picture this quite clearly in my mind (there are wingsuits as well as robots in Michael Bay’s cinematic triumph, worth noting for any Academy members reading this). Actually, for better or for worse, I’m betting a fair amount of readers will be thinking of Transformers 3, which is simply a matter of serendipitous release dates. But even if readers aren’t thinking of the silver screen, Gutman has written a high octane opening that gives the reader enough of what they want that they’ll be satisfied for a few more chapters of plot and character until a school is burned down.
And by now, Esteemed Reader, you know just what sort of book you’re getting into. Someone is trying to kill Coke and Pepsi McDonald because, wait for it, they scored extremely well on standardized tests and have therefore been selected for a top secret government program known as The Genius Files. After witnessing the destruction of the pentagon on September 11, 2001, Dr. Herman Warsaw has decided that the only answer to the world’s problems is to enlist the genius children across the United States and to send them on top secret missions that not even their parents can know about. But could the inventor of such a crazy scheme be, in fact, crazy himself? Dum, dum, dum! But I’ve said too much.
What alarmed me just a little was that there is a lengthy description of the events of September 11th, 2001, in Chapter 5, even going so far as to counter the popular conspiracy theory that a plane did not actually crash into the pentagon. Doesn’t everyone already know all that stuff? I don’t want to spend much time on this subject as it’s just a detail of the overarching plot, but it occurred to me that it’s coming up on ten years and therefore there are children who will be reading this book who won’t remember that day, but who may have seen YouTube conspiracy videos and who will need these details spelled out for them. There’s nothing profound here beyond the Ninja’s realization that he’s getting older, time is passing, and a new generation is scheming to rise up and replace him one day. Still, it’s a testament to Gutman’s knowing his reader that he accepts they may need to be caught up to follow the story.
Okay, back on track. The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable is a good start for what promises to be a fun and exciting series (there’s an excerpt from Book 2 at the end, but don’t read it before hand as it totally spoils Book 1). I’m looking forward to more adventures with Coke and Pepsi and I’ll bet you will too. It’s just a good set-up. What kid wouldn’t like to have a secret double life as a government operative? And Gutman is funny while he keeps the thrills coming, ensuring a good time lies ahead.
And now I have three points I want to make about craft and some lengthy passages to share and we’ll call it a review. My first point I’m going to let Gutman make for me:
Ordinarily in a story, this is where the author tells the readers what the main character—or, in this case, characters—look like. The author might on for page after page, painting a glorious word picture of Coke’s and Pep’s hair, their faces, the way they walk and talk, the way they dress, and so on.
But you know what? Who cares? Do you really care what Coke and Pep look like? Does it really matter to you. It’s boring. By the time you get to Chapter Three, you will have forgotten the description you read back in Chapter One, anyway. Coke and Pep are twelve-year-old twins, about to turn thirteen in a week. Okay? Nuff said. That’s all you need to know right now.
You really want to know what they look like? Look at the cover of this book. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let’s move on to the good part—the part where Coke and Pep go over the cliff.
What he said. I don’t really have anything to add.
The second thing I want to draw your attention to is that The Genius Files is a series being written for today’s kids. It’s anyone’s guess as to which books will end up being new classics and which won’t and much of it is beyond the author’s control. After all, Bridge to Terabithia is very much a story of its time and yet it remains popular today. Too many writers avoid specifically nailing their book to the time in which it is written in hopes of giving the novel longevity. Even the Ninja was advised to cut President Obama from his hopefully soon-to-be-published manuscript for this very reason.
But adult writers don’t do this. Under the Dome by Stephen King (reading it again because it ruled) makes use of Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper, whom readers twenty or thirty years from now might not know, and James Patterson opens many of his Alex Cross novels with a review of movies or books that just came out (somebody get Patterson a blog). The Genius Files never states a date, but Gutman does provide links to webpage’s for readers to verify information. How long those links will be good is anyone’s guess. But in the meantime, it’s an innovative way to further involve young readers and to make a book a part of their overall interactive media experience.
The McDonalds are on a trip across America and Gutman explains to young readers how they can go online to Google Maps and chart their journey. It’s a good idea and a way to create an interactive, multimedia experience without investing in a website or other online campaign. The Genius Files may go on to become a classic, it may not. There’s no way to know. For all we know, Harry Potter may yet fizzle out and future readers will have never heard of him. They may not, and this is truly frightening, even know who Batman is (I could never live in such a world). After all, it’s a comic book, not The Odyssey (Superman, on the other hand…). Although, for the record, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns is an American epic I hope will linger after our empire has collapsed.
Gutman isn’t particularly worried what readers one hundred years from now will think about The Genius Files. He wants to hook today’s readers and he’s written a book for them. Should a classics edition be released in one hundred years with updated links, gravy, and there’s nothing preventing future generations from doing it. But Gutman isn’t sacrificing today’s readership in the hopes of being discovered after his death, which seems to be the strange strategy of a number of writers.
My third and final point is that Gutman slips in a bit of editorial now and again, but he does it without interrupting the story. No one wants to read a writer’s manifesto. We don’t really care what the writer’s political beliefs may be. We just want a good story. Writers who include entire chapters of idealogical diatribes will likely lose readers (we’re looking for fiction, not Bill Maher’s New Rules). But a writer who gives us a good story well told can get away with slipping a few quick shots in now and again, so long as he does so sparingly and without halting the narrative.
For example, the twins themselves are named Coke and Pepsi McDonald in “an ironic statement about how corporations control people’s lives.” After all, they have to be named something, and Gutman knows as well as you and I do that sooner or later we are going to have to fight back against big business to avoid being shills and slaves, so why not fan the flames of revolution just a little? Heck, as a writer of a great adventure, you’ve got the attention of young readers, which is what you wanted in the first place, so why not tell them a little of what you want to say? So long as you keep it in the story and pick your moments, that’s a writer’s privilege.
And having Pep respond in conversation with her father: “But wasn’t Manifest Destiny just an excuse to steal the land and kill the Indians who were living in North America long before we did?” asked Pep. “Wasn’t it almost like genocide?” doesn’t alter the tone of the story, nor does it interrupt it. There’s a line and the closer you come to crossing it, the more readers you risk alienating. Still, Gutman delivers on an exciting adventure and therefore earns a few asides. And why not provoke the thoughts of young readers with an alternate version of Manifest Destiny than the official story they may have read so long as you’re quick about it? Isn’t provoking young minds the whole point?
As always, I’ll leave you with some of my favorite excerpts from The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable:
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Chances are you’ve never fallen off a cliff. If you had, you probably wouldn’t be reading this right now. Because you would be dead.
But have you ever jumped off a high diving board? Have you ever dropped into a steep water slide or a half pipe? Have you ever been on a really high roller coaster?
Well, forget it. Falling off a cliff is nothing like any of those experiences. You still have no idea what the McDonald twins were going through.
Coke had a theory to explain grown-ups, as he did for most things in life. In his view, babies are born with a specific number of brain cells, which waste away and die off as people get older. So by the time they reach thirty—and certainly by the time they reach forty—most of their brain cells are gone. This explains why grown-ups do and say the things they do.
To back up his theory, in third grade Coke did a school research project involving music. He made a list of the greatest composers in history, from Beethoven to the Beatles. Then he tracked when they wrote their best music.
Irving Berlin wrote his first hit song—“Alexander’s Ragtime Band”—when he was just twenty-three years old. The Beatles made Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, their most innovative album, when John Lennon was twenty-seven and Paul McCartney was twenty-five. Beethoven started going deaf at thirty-one. Mozart was composing minuets at age five and was dead at thirty-five.
Almost as a rule, composers created their finest work in their twenties. There was a severe drop after the age of thirty. This, to Coke, was proof that the human brain deteriorates by the time people become parents. Which explains why parents are so weird. They’re essentially operating with an empty skull filled with dead brain cells.
And if his family wanted him to drive hours out of his way to Minnesota to see another @#$%^** ball of twine, he decided, then, @#$%^**, he would drive them there. That's the kind of a man he was.
Please excuse the language. This is just what was going through Dr. McDonald's mind.
To read an interview with author Dan Gutman or to read interviews with other authors and literary agents, log onto my blog at www.middlegradeninja.blogspot.com
April 3, 2016
This book felt condescending to children, the plot and characters were unbelievable, and the author made the girl protagonist out to be pathetic compared to her brother.
December 30, 2023
Predictable, corny, unlifelike, and boring.
Who wants to read about a road trip?
I acknowledge this book is for younger readers, but the mix of near-death situations and mature concepts aren't right for kids. Also, the plot is way too straightforward (Let's go here! Now let's go there! Now...). The main characters are dimensionless and so are the villains. Also some pretty basic things are left out or just glossed over.
EX: "We almost died? Well, who cares? Let's just not say anything. Mom and Dad won't notice!"
"Hey kids, where have you been for the last hour? Well, who cares? Let's just eat dinner!"
The parents are portrayed as pretty unintelligent, and they're really bad at their job. None of the characters seem to remember the seriousness of anything that has happened for over a page, which is really annoying and makes things quite corny.
I would recommend it to nine or ten year olds, but as I mentioned, some elements like somewhat cruel or weird ways of killing, dying, etc that are in the book might not really be right for that age group either. It’s handled pretty tamely though so I doubt it would truly bother readers very much.
2 stars= pretty darn bad, but had a smidgen of potential. I really don't think it will get any better.
Who wants to read about a road trip?
I acknowledge this book is for younger readers, but the mix of near-death situations and mature concepts aren't right for kids. Also, the plot is way too straightforward (Let's go here! Now let's go there! Now...). The main characters are dimensionless and so are the villains. Also some pretty basic things are left out or just glossed over.
EX: "We almost died? Well, who cares? Let's just not say anything. Mom and Dad won't notice!"
"Hey kids, where have you been for the last hour? Well, who cares? Let's just eat dinner!"
The parents are portrayed as pretty unintelligent, and they're really bad at their job. None of the characters seem to remember the seriousness of anything that has happened for over a page, which is really annoying and makes things quite corny.
I would recommend it to nine or ten year olds, but as I mentioned, some elements like somewhat cruel or weird ways of killing, dying, etc that are in the book might not really be right for that age group either. It’s handled pretty tamely though so I doubt it would truly bother readers very much.
2 stars= pretty darn bad, but had a smidgen of potential. I really don't think it will get any better.
Read
September 1, 2017Read this out loud to my seven-year-old twins. One of them liked it. One of them didn’t. I wasn’t a huge fan. The writing style included lots of narrator intrusion, which isn’t really my thing, and I had a hard time buying the premise that the US government had given up on adults solving the world’s problems, so had instead turned to the children. (But maybe I only think that because I’m an adult.) On the plus side, I think the titles for this series are brilliant. But one book of the Genius Files is enough for me.
September 20, 2013
This book is one of my favorite books of all time it is a thrilling book with some mysteries in it. If you like thrilling and mystery book's I advice you to read it.
The book "The Genius Files, Mission unstoppable" is about 2 kids ,Coke and Pepsi or pep for short are in, after school detention on the last day of school. At this point they are unaware that the school has been set on fire and the room they are in is locked so they can't get out. At this time they have been selected to be in a top seekeret orginisashion to be a kid in The Genius Files, where they have kid spy's, but I comes with a price.
That is a little sneak peak of the first chapters, in my own words.
The book "The Genius Files, Mission unstoppable" is about 2 kids ,Coke and Pepsi or pep for short are in, after school detention on the last day of school. At this point they are unaware that the school has been set on fire and the room they are in is locked so they can't get out. At this time they have been selected to be in a top seekeret orginisashion to be a kid in The Genius Files, where they have kid spy's, but I comes with a price.
That is a little sneak peak of the first chapters, in my own words.
April 14, 2018
My son liked it. He got engaged with characters and he thought most parts were funny. I had some issues with it, but my son enjoyed it, so that's what matters.
June 24, 2018
Fun to include mid-western landmarks from Minnesota and Wisconsin...I usually only read a first book in a series especially when junior fiction. But I may have to read all to see how the story ends!
April 27, 2020
I thought Dr Warsaw was a good guy when I read the end I was so wrong! the book was AWESOME!!!!!!
June 30, 2023
Listened to this with the kids. A cross-country adventure featuring ACTUAL weird and wacky sites~ YES! I was really excited about this!
However, we could not get over how incredibly RUDE everyone was to one another!! The kids were rude to each other… The kids were rude to the parents… The parents were rude to the kids… And don’t even get me started on the book basically saying kids are smarter than adults and glorifying kids lying and keeping secrets from their parents. All of that was a huge NOPE for me. I have no interest in continuing with this series.
However, we could not get over how incredibly RUDE everyone was to one another!! The kids were rude to each other… The kids were rude to the parents… The parents were rude to the kids… And don’t even get me started on the book basically saying kids are smarter than adults and glorifying kids lying and keeping secrets from their parents. All of that was a huge NOPE for me. I have no interest in continuing with this series.
June 4, 2023
it was really good. I like how the parents are so oblivious about everything:]
January 23, 2015
This book is probably one of the greatest books i have ever read in my life. This book is surprisingly, really good for many different reasons. One thing i liked about it is that it explained and talked about numerous facts that are mind-blowing and are just simply amazing. It ranged from being completely weird, to being simply marvelous and really great facts. Another reason is that it builds suspense for the person that's reading the book. This book gives the reader different predictions on what could and would've had happened and it's just a great way in building the readers suspense. One downside to this book is that it didn't really explain on whats happening in some parts of the book, it just simply went through it at a fast pace and then slowed down at point, but anyways. All in all, i think that this book is really good and deserves to have 5 stars!!
October 12, 2015
I started this with my son a few months ago, and once we hit the half-way point he took off on his own and left me the in the dust. That's a testament to what a fun read The Genius Files is. Perfect for 9-12 and maybe even older. I love the emphasis this book places on Americana as the family embarks on a non-traditional trip across the country. And the interactive aspects of encouraging the reader to look things up online is really cool too. Awesome cloak and dagger happenings as well make this an irresistible read and I'm looking forward to the sequel myself.
July 19, 2022
I read this with my class and we laughed the whole way through it.I love the way Dan Gutman tells us about real places with real facts, but yet wants us to get a laugh in and makes you want to keep on reading. I then started to read the rest of the series, learning facts while trying to contain my laughter. Love this book so much.
kids-read
September 17, 2015My 4th grader read this because a friend suggested books by the author. He read it in a day and said it was good. That's as much of a review as I could get out of him.
June 5, 2019
This is the first book in The Genius Files series by Dan Gutman. Our girls and I read many of his books from the My Weird School series and I was excited to see this book, written for slightly older children.
The story starts out in similar ways from his previous works, with some conversation between the narrator and the reader, breaking the fourth wall. The narrative is filled with humorous word play as well as the juxtapositions of the drama of being in mortal danger and the silliness of the odd stops along their journey.
I was fascinated by the fact that Coke had initially been named by his parents, not for the sugary soft drink, but for "the solid product resulting from the destructive distillation of coal in an oven or closed chamber or by imperfect combustion, consisting principally of carbon." (p. 2) We spend a lot of time in West Virginia and we learned about this kind of processing of coal during our visits to some of the towns that specialized in it many years ago.
I thought it was very clever for Mr. Gutman to encourage the reader to look up different facts online and giving some basic explanations for some scientific concepts, like aerodynamics. The fact that these twin preteens have such a fantastic (and dangerous) adventure along the way just adds to the entertainment factor.
Mr. Gutman's style of writing is recognizable from his other books, and the way the children interact with one another (best friends at one moment, bitter rivals the next) as well as the silly interjections, like "Let's blow this pop stand!" (pp. 17, 129, 151, 185, 222, 242, 282)
Some of the pop culture references, such as Steppenwolf and Monty Python's Flying Circus, are more suitable for people my age than for the 9-12 target demographic, so parents reading with their children will likely appreciate them.
Overall, it was a fun, fast read and I think that fans of Mr. Gutman's books for younger readers will love it. I liked it, but I'm not sure that I'll be overeager to continue with the series. Good, but not great.
interesting quotes (page numbers from hardcover edition with ISBN13 9780061827648):
"But the thing is, no matter how unusual someone's name is, after you hear it a few dozen times, the name starts to fit the person, like a comfortable pair of jeans. You can't imagine that boy or girl ever having a different name." (pp. 4-5)
"Murderers don't drive golf carts!" (p. 10)
"Coke had a theory to explain grown-ups, as he did for most things in life. In his view, babies are born with a specific number of brain cells, which waste away and die off as people get older. So by the time they reach thirty—and certainly by the time they reach forty—most of their brain cells are gone. This explains why grown-ups do and say the things they do." (p. 36)
"They had been attacked by guys in golf carts with blow guns, jumped off a cliff, been locked in a burning school, and had their heads stapled, but putting coins in a slot machine was considered too dangerous for kids. Go figure." (p. 140)
"They should have dropped a hundred million pounds of SPAM on Hitler." (p. 200)
"The largest ball of twine is a symbol of America, just like the Liberty Bell or the White House. No other country in the world would produce a dreamer who spends thirty years of his life rolling a giant ball of twine. It's symbolic of the American spirit: hard work, determination, creativity, freedom, and all that stuff." (p. 219)
"This place looks like Disneyland on drugs." (p. 253)
"I almost thought you were, like, a fictional character or something." (p. 267)
The story starts out in similar ways from his previous works, with some conversation between the narrator and the reader, breaking the fourth wall. The narrative is filled with humorous word play as well as the juxtapositions of the drama of being in mortal danger and the silliness of the odd stops along their journey.
I was fascinated by the fact that Coke had initially been named by his parents, not for the sugary soft drink, but for "the solid product resulting from the destructive distillation of coal in an oven or closed chamber or by imperfect combustion, consisting principally of carbon." (p. 2) We spend a lot of time in West Virginia and we learned about this kind of processing of coal during our visits to some of the towns that specialized in it many years ago.
I thought it was very clever for Mr. Gutman to encourage the reader to look up different facts online and giving some basic explanations for some scientific concepts, like aerodynamics. The fact that these twin preteens have such a fantastic (and dangerous) adventure along the way just adds to the entertainment factor.
Mr. Gutman's style of writing is recognizable from his other books, and the way the children interact with one another (best friends at one moment, bitter rivals the next) as well as the silly interjections, like "Let's blow this pop stand!" (pp. 17, 129, 151, 185, 222, 242, 282)
Some of the pop culture references, such as Steppenwolf and Monty Python's Flying Circus, are more suitable for people my age than for the 9-12 target demographic, so parents reading with their children will likely appreciate them.
Overall, it was a fun, fast read and I think that fans of Mr. Gutman's books for younger readers will love it. I liked it, but I'm not sure that I'll be overeager to continue with the series. Good, but not great.
interesting quotes (page numbers from hardcover edition with ISBN13 9780061827648):
"But the thing is, no matter how unusual someone's name is, after you hear it a few dozen times, the name starts to fit the person, like a comfortable pair of jeans. You can't imagine that boy or girl ever having a different name." (pp. 4-5)
"Murderers don't drive golf carts!" (p. 10)
"Coke had a theory to explain grown-ups, as he did for most things in life. In his view, babies are born with a specific number of brain cells, which waste away and die off as people get older. So by the time they reach thirty—and certainly by the time they reach forty—most of their brain cells are gone. This explains why grown-ups do and say the things they do." (p. 36)
"They had been attacked by guys in golf carts with blow guns, jumped off a cliff, been locked in a burning school, and had their heads stapled, but putting coins in a slot machine was considered too dangerous for kids. Go figure." (p. 140)
"They should have dropped a hundred million pounds of SPAM on Hitler." (p. 200)
"The largest ball of twine is a symbol of America, just like the Liberty Bell or the White House. No other country in the world would produce a dreamer who spends thirty years of his life rolling a giant ball of twine. It's symbolic of the American spirit: hard work, determination, creativity, freedom, and all that stuff." (p. 219)
"This place looks like Disneyland on drugs." (p. 253)
"I almost thought you were, like, a fictional character or something." (p. 267)
October 2, 2017
This is a children’s novel book. This book is about Coke and Pepsi Macdonald, they are in a group that is called Genius Files, Doctor Warsaw is trying to get rid of the Genius Files. This is a average book that is not too difficult to read. I like this book because it is a adventure book and interesting to read. This book has 4 series . I would recommend this book to people who likes to read adventure story.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 25, 2020
My son and I have listened to these audio books so many times I got quite sick of them. But when he finally agreed to try other things, I became acutely aware that the Genius Files were actually awesomely fun, hilarious, suspenseful, and very well written. Much more enjoyable for me, the mom, than a lot of books that appeal to my 11-yo son. And the audio versions are great.
August 20, 2023
Wanted to reread this book, but all I knew about it was; the two main characters were named after soda, and a group of adults tried to kill them in the weirdest of places. Thank god for Judy, or I never would have found it. Such a feel good read, it reminds me of elementary school and easier times.
November 4, 2019
ерша ищщл Уфы муки инв иге ш куфв ше аяк ф срфддутпу
December 8, 2019
I read this book with some kids in my daughters 5th grade class and we all enjoyed it.
October 28, 2023
Did "book club" for this one with my son. I thought it had some cute parts, but wasn't my personal favorite. Definitely was geared towards more of a 10 year-old boy's interests and humor. Fun to talk about some of the highlights together. He is already on book 2.
December 9, 2023
I started reading this out loud to Henry one night, then he ended up staying up really late to finish it all on his own. I finally finished reading it myself so we can start book #2 together.
January 15, 2026
I love this book. I love how there is mysteries that you solve along with Coke and Pep. Great book!
February 4, 2026
Terrible philosophies throughout the whole book.
May 3, 2019
Fast paced and fun
December 1, 2022
I gave it one star because my mom did not like it and it was very cheesy and there’s only a few good parts. You could literally read three parts and get the whole summary of the book.
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