Stranger Things

Looniverse #1

by David Lubar, Matt Loveridge (Illustrator)

Ed finds a coin bearing the words "strange, stranger." Once this coin comes into his life, strange things start happening all around him. One of his friends gets stuck in midair, his brother turns into a pool float, and his sister's food makes its way off her plate! Even more bizarre events all lead up to a surprise ending, leaving Ed with a new responsibility and a realization that there's more to this mysterious coin than meets the eye!

Genres: Fantasy, Humor, Childrens, Chapter Books, Magic, Juvenile, Mystery

96 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2013

About the author

David Lubar created a sensation with his debut novel, Hidden Talents, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Thousands of kids and educators across the country have voted Hidden Talents onto over twenty state lists. David is also the author of True Talents, the sequel to Hidden Talents; Flip, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a VOYA Best Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror selection; several short story collections: In the Land of the Lawn Weenies, Invasion of the Road Weenies, The Curse of the Campfire Weenies, The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies, and Attack of the Vampire Weenies; and the Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie series. Lubar grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, and he has also lived in New Brunswick, Edison and Piscataway, NJ, and Sacramento, CA. Besides writing, he has also worked as a video game programmer and designer. He now lives in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/davidl...

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😃😃😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆
I enjoyed this book because I like coins. I also enjoyed this book because I liked the part when Mouse lifted up a tree and found a dollar bill under it.💯😂😂😂😂😂😂😁😁😁😁😁😁😌😌😌😌😌😌🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂😉😉😉😉😉😉😃😃😃😃😃😃😄😄😄😄😄😄😏😏😏😏😏😏😎😎😎😎😎😎😅😅😅😅😅😅😇😇😇😇😇😇😍😍😍😍😍😍

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

How does one describe a book where a picture is literally 1000 words. A normal kid picks up a coin and everything goes strange. Can he rescue the universe? Will hé learn to appreciate strangeness.

Perfect book fir my 7 year old. Good word repetition without feeling like Dick and Jane. Exciting and funny story that we both didn’t want to put down. My kiddo loves funny and strange so this was a great pick. Good illustrations to go with the events of the book.

[Yochi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this Branches Series book. I really love reading my 6 year old The Notebook of Doom so I decided to "branch" out to see what the other books in this Schoolastic series were like. I didn't find the story to flow very well, especially in comparison to the Notebook of Doom, and the characters were meh, but my son really enjoyed it, so we'll be reading more of these. I hope they get better as they progress.

[Checkthebook · Rating 2 out of 5]

Passable, except for the comment p. 18 "parents are supposed to be strange" which I didn't appreciate. This book is funny, but I like author David Lubar's classic book "Punished" much better. Still, you can see his appealing loopiness in this book also. I have not yet read the others in this series. Like I have said before, Scholastic's "Branches" line, of which this is a part, is not as uplifting as I would have hoped. The "Dragon Masters" series is really the best series in the Branches lineup.

[Tanner Brock · Rating 5 out of 5]

The three funniest parts about the book were: when Quentin One was riding his bicycle and he was waving to Ed and his head was all the way turned around, then in chapter 11 Mouse was running and going so fast that his feet didn't even touch the ground, and when Quentin Three was riding his skateboard and his wheels fell off and he was riding it without wheels.

[Becky B · Rating 4 out of 5]

After finding a coin with nothing but the words "strange, stranger" on it, Ed's super ordinary life gets much stranger. When things escalate from his brother trading in a thousand words for a picture-strange to his friend's brother almost floating off into space-strange Ed realizes he must figure out how to stop the strangeness, and just throwing the coin away doesn't seem to work.

All the strange things in this are on the humorous to wildly imaginative part of the spectrum and not on the scary-freaky side at all. (And adults, just an FYI, this did come out years before the TV show of the same name.) It is a curious mystery Ed has to solve with an unexpected answer. I doubt many lower grade readers will be able to correctly predict who Ed is supposed to give the coin to. The book ultimately celebrates the ways our "strangeness" makes the world a better place, which should be a comforting thought for all the kids who don't quite feel like they fit in. (And let's face it, that's probably the majority of kids...and adults for that matter.) A wildly imaginative tale that's good for both the upper end of the lower grade spectrum and the lower end of the middle grade spectrum of readers.

No content issues.

[Debra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is one of the series in the Branches imprint from Scholastic for beginning readers transitioning to chapter books. This is not yet one of my favorites. I found the story a little shallow in comparison to the others in the Branches imprint that I have read. Ed, a plain old normal third grader, finds a mysterious coin and strange or Loony things start to happen. This book definitely has quite a few words to a page, but it does have black and white illustrations that break up the type. I am going to read a few more in the series to see how I feel about this series.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm learning how to do better book talks and get kids excited about a book. One of the sure fire tricks is to read the first couple of chapters. Then everyone is dying to read the rest.


I took it home and finished it...because I felt the same way. I needed to know what happens! When I finished it I thought, "Gee, this seems familiar!" Then it struck me. David Lubar! We read Punished for the Battle of the Books a few years ago. This one is pretty similar.



The Branches series are great for kids not quite into chapter books just yet.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ed is just a plain old normal 3rd grader with an older sister, a younger brother, and a younger sister, and two pets. Nothing ever happens to Ed, that is, until he finds a silver coin in the grass. His life suddenly goes from normal to strange, and stranger. He finds himself "the" stranger in the middle of a looniverse, and the strange and amazing adventures are only beginning.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ed is boring until he finds an odd coin. Then everything around him starts getting strange. He struggles to find a Stranger to return the strange coin to, but contemplated whether eliminating all strangeness from the world would actually make things better.

[SABRINA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute story about a little boy who encounters many strange things and tries to figure out how he feels about them, and then later accepting his fate! Easy Reader for beginning readers getting into chapter books, filled with lots of fun illustrations and emphasizing words in different fonts!

[Cym · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is for my child’s book review for school and she asked me to read it. It somehow teaches that being strange is okay and the world needs strangeness so that masterpieces could be created. And that one’s perception of oneself is indeed different from others’ points of view.

[Samuel · Rating 2 out of 5]

My stepdaughter did a purge of her books recently, and this was one she decided to part with. I picked it up and did a quick read of it before putting it back in the pile. It's fine as far as it goes, and kids might well like it, but I'm not sure it has much staying power.

[Sunny · Rating 4 out of 5]

That coin was strange.how did the boy found that coin?

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

BCFL checkout.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked it because of the title.

[Sutton Hargrove · Rating 5 out of 5]

AR test 9 out of 10

[Ruben]

I like the parts when he would touch the coin and every thing would be weird

[PageTurners; · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strange. Straight up cringey and strange hints.

3.8 ⭐️

[Stephanie Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early chapter book with illustrations that would be fun for 1st-3rd graders.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this story with my son, we couldn't decide if the strange things in this book were funny or weird, but it was an entertaining read.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was just right for the Monday book club. Right reading level, plenty of action, fun illustrations. The story was actually more substantial than I expected.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars for this easy chapter book that appears to be about an ordinary kid dealing with very unusual situations. It is only at the end that we come to realize it is really a (potential) superhero origin story that sets the stage for adventures to come. It is this potential established as a series launching pad that bumped my rating from 3 to 4 stars, because it's a strong premise (stronger than it is a solitary story).

Despite the series name, the tone is one of mild lunacy better described as strange and quirky than wacky or absurd--it's more grounded in reality than some of the other options that operate with freely unbound imagination and without rules--yet it's a very charming and approachable strangeness. There's a fun to the randomness and a serious puzzle to solve. I enjoyed it and am curious to check out the books that follow.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ed is a normal boy in the third grade. He has a normal family and normal friends. He lives in a normal town and he does normal things. Then one day he finds a bizarre coin in the grass. Suddenly his normal life is anything but normal. Everyone and everything around him starts acting stranger and stranger. As a desperate last resort Ed seeks the advice of Mr. Sage, owner of The New Curiosity Shop. Could it be possible that Ed himself is the cause of all the strange things happening around him? Can he do anything to stop the strangeness and return to normal? Does he even want to be normal again?
Scholastic's new imprint Branches has given us another wonderful series for beginning chapter book readers. This magical tale will grab the attention of kids, particularly boys, in 1st-4th grade.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although elementary readers may enjoy this new title, part of a new series, I didn't particularly care for it. That's rather odd since I like strange things, strange individuals, and strange sayings. The story revolves around a fairly ordinary third grader named Ed who finds a silver coin that has a strange effect on everyone around him. His older sister uses veggies to build vehicles that move, and his friend's brother develops super-human lifting skills. A twist at the end reminds readers and Ed that a little bit of strangeness in the world is actually a good thing. But for me, even with that reminder, it all seemed too silly.

[Christie · Rating 4 out of 5]

About a boy who finds a coin that makes things stranger around him. I think kids will think this is a really funny book.

[Teresa Bateman · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author is known for his off-beat humor and it certainly shows in this eleven chapter transitional reader. Ed finds a weird coin and then strange things begin happening--REALLY strange things. Things are upside-down, gravity-defying, and just plain peculiar. All of his friends notice that when they're around Ed life is bizarre. There is only one hope--to find the "stranger" and give him the coin. But there's a deadline, of course. And who is this "stranger?" This is wacky book that doesn't always make sense. That probably won't make a difference with the intended audience, however.

[Jean-Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

My 6-year-old read this to me. While he'll probably read more books from this series, we didn't enjoy it quite as much as the "Notebook of Doom" series, also published by Scholastic Branches. I also think this book is a bit more difficult to read for new readers. Because of its "strangeness" the words are less intuitive and new readers have to really concentrate to read the words vs. predict-read the words. Trying to interpret the words and illustrations of this unpredictable/strange story while reading it aloud breaks up fluency a bit.

[Elissa Schaeffer · Rating 2 out of 5]

A wacky book--by design--but a little not-by-design odd, too. I had trouble following what was going on, maybe because I'm not the target audience? But I'd like to think if I had trouble so would kids reading this. David Lubar can pull of wacky, fun, and not confusing (see Punished!) but this one didn't cut it with me.

Grades 2 and up.