Meanwhile Adventures

The Rover Adventures #3

by Roddy Doyle

Mr Mack's inventing career has got off to a bad start - he's been arrested! It's up to Jimmy, Robbie, Kayla and Rover the wonder-og to: - Rescue Mr Mack from prison - Avoid the orphan catchers - Save the world from an army of stroppy slugs Will they succeed There's only one way to find out.

Genres: Childrens, Fiction, Fantasy, Middle Grade, Humor, Animals, Comedy

176 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2004

About the author

Roddy Doyle (Irish: Ruaidhrí Ó Dúill) is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. Several of his books have been made into successful films, beginning with The Commitments in 1991. He won the Booker Prize in 1993.

Doyle grew up in Kilbarrack, Dublin. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from University College, Dublin. He spent several years as an English and geography teacher before becoming a full-time writer in 1993.

Reviews

[Brad · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Mack books have had mixed success with me, and this is my least favourite for one big reason -- a total lack of charm.

The first book, The Giggler Treatment, was packed full of charm. Little Gigglers, pissed off that adults would be mean to children, drop burning poo bombs at the feet of the mean adults. So Rover, the genius dog of the Macks, capitalizes on the Treatment and becomes rich. It's funny, silly, and full of geniune giggles for kids and their parents. Like I said, "Charming."

Rover Saves Christmas was even better. Rover does just that, and it is one of the most charming spins off the Santa legend I've ever read. Of course I read it to the kids during the run-up to Christmas, so the timing might have had some role to play, but it was really an excellent book.

But The Meanwhile Adventures doesn't have that charm anymore, and I think it had to do with the "meanwhile" concept. Most of the tale is fractured as the Mack family are each off doing their own thing, "meanwhile ..." we bounce around from thread to thread and are continually told how boring everything is by the narrator (which it is, but the declaration that it is does nothing to mitigate the issue), and just when things start to pick up we're off on another tangent.

It feels like we never really linger long enough for some charm to appear. Even my little Scoutie, who's usually the least critical audience for my aloud performances, was thoroughly bored. She spent more time playing with her dollies than listening to the tale. That's an indictment in Scoutie's world.

Oh well, it wasn't total crap. It did have Mrs. Mack's world record run.

[Shelby · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars
This book was really cute short book to read. I liked everything about this book form the characters and the writing of this book. This was a cute story for young adults. I love this book. I would maybe read this book again some time again in the future. Highly recommend this book to anyone that is looking for a cute short book to read.

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one never grabbed me I am afraid. Two little girls who only speak the same one-line remark does not make for identifiable characters; the father who gets arrested does not tell the police that putting him in jail temporarily will leave small children unattended. There is no plot, except to scatter the characters and then bring them back to much the same place as they had been in, and kids may have fun with the unpredictability and ridiculousness but many of the sidelines seem like padding that gets dropped instead of developed. Like the slugs which wanted to take over the world.

I did enjoy that the kids' mum is a world record breaker of records, many involving physical feats.

Young children may have fun, but I have not read the earlier books in this series which may have been stronger. This book - ask yourself if a new writer, who had no track record, brought it to a publisher, would it get published? Or would an editor sit down and demand a rewrite, if they deigned to reply to the mail?

This is an unbiased review.

[Bradley Monkman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very repetitive. Got boring after a while, finished it though.

[Atbash (Emma) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Delightful, but a little too disorganized for its own good. The plot itself is kind of Wayside-School-style quirky and could have existed as similarly short interconnected stories, each ending with some kind of individual payoff before the conclusion of the story gives it all a sense of cohesiveness. Instead of doing something like that, this book tries to spiff up its concepts by twisting them up together and hoping the unorthodox manner with which it's all delivered is enough to carry it. But the book doesn’t seem to trust that it is, because it tries to distract the reader from how lackluster the ideas actually are with glossary gags and non sequiturs and a little meta section where the author blows up in an explosion and the characters can’t do anything for a while and then the author has to write himself back into his desk chair. Like, it didn’t earn any of that. It’s too busy– I can’t picture its target audience sticking with it for long enough to see it to its conclusion. But the book opens with the author talking to someone in italicized text who keeps pestering him about how boring the story is, so I suppose that should have told me from the start how much faith the text had in itself.

I did like the joke about the dad inventing a “saw” that was actually just a gun, and it worked like a gun, but it also technically did what a saw does, so he called it a saw. That’s pretty funny.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Children will love the zany humour and outrageously impossible adventures in this short book. The various lightly linked plots have an effervescent quality which adds to the enjoyment. My only reservation is that I think that the references to Doyle’s earlier books near the end were unnecessary. But that’s only a minor point.

[Florrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plot in the book the meanwhile adventures is how billyjean, the mother of robby and jimmy, tries to break the record of the first women to run around the world without telling anyone. then there is her husband, mister mack, he is an inventor and he invents a saw looking like a machine gun. he got sent to jail. then it is all up to there kids Robby and jimmy, to find there mother and save there father. they get help from rover a dog. then they run all around the world to find billyjean and she saves her husband.
the main character in this book is rover, the intelligent dog that can talk. he never talks in front of adults only kids.
i really liked this book since it was full of adventure and Roddy dole is an amazing author. there were lots of descriptive words so i could really picture it in my head. the book was amazing and i think that its fine for anyone who likes funny adventure books.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not just for kids! This was a great family read aloud. Roddy Doyle rocks.

[Darragh Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read this book in September 2019 when I was 13 years old. It was a library book in my old secondary school, and I fell in love with it. However, years passed, and I casually forgot about it until May 2024. I found it on Amazon and decided to buy it.

The book juggles many different storylines: Mister Mack getting falsely arrested, his sons Robbie and Jimmy digging a tunnel under their house to rescue him, his daughter Kayla and her friend Victoria riding Rover around the world to find Kayla’s mother Billie Jean Fleetwood-Mack, who is breaking the record for running around the world (without telling anyone might I add). It’s straightforward enough in the beginning, but as the book goes on, it starts to get discombobulating and you kinda have to take a step back and be like “what the hell is going on?”.

That’s my biggest problem with this book. The writing, however, is quite funny. I’ve sort of been incorporating this kind of chatty writing into my own writing (though I try to keep it to a minimum). The illustrations are quite endearing, too. I have yet to read the other two books in Rover’s Adventures, but I hope I enjoy them as much as — if not more than — this book.

In this kind of situation, I would give it a high rating due to nostalgia. But coming back to this book as a 17-now 18 year old, I didn’t find myself enjoying it as much as I did when I was 13. The story was way too convoluting in the second half, and I think the amount of storylines should have been trimmed down to make it flow better.

Three stars for me.

[Sha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this re-read. I remember my initial reading experience involved a lot of laughs, and huge love for Doyle's use of "meanwhile" to emphasize the several crazy plot lines going on. But this time, some of the plots just didn't weave together for me and the humour didn't click.

In The Meanwhile Adventures, Mr. Mack (patriarch of the Mack family) is out of a job and turns to inventing. He comes up with what he thinks will make all the dough: a saw, that looks uncannily like a machine gun. When Mr. Mack takes his invention to the bank to get a loan, he's arrested SO he needs his wife to come prove it's actually a saw BUT his wife is MIA on a secret mission of some kind SO his intrepid sons plan to help him escape jail WHILE his daughter and a talking dog go find his wife.

All of this part of the plot I did enjoy. The humour here was good. I chuckled at Mr. Mack somehow not seeing why a machine gun shaped saw could be an issue, and his sons just rolling with the idea of tunneling into a jail. Doyle's writing is sharp and concise, and there is no lack of action.

But the tie-ins with the orphan catcher just threw me off a little and the whole snail revolution came in and out of the story too fast for me to understand. An enjoyable read but not a fave. The Giggle Treatment may be a preferred one for me in this series!

[David Cluett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this book in Year 6 after I was recommended it by my teacher at the time. I was a cheeky kid and this unsurprisingly is a cheeky book. The book is written in a very off the cuff way, very short chapters and spontaneous passages of text make this book a unique read. It’s very difficult not to read all 169 pages at once as each page flows nicely into the next. The only issue with this story is that it has a few adult references that children may struggle to understand, but this can be resolved by collaborative reading between adult and child. This can dampen the witty effect of the wit in the story if you have to stop explain each joke but on the whole it’s a very enjoyable read with lots of interesting learning points to pick out (geography, maths, DT etc.).

[Alberto · Rating 1 out of 5]

Purtoppo il libro non ha soddisfatto le attese. Mi sono pazzamente innamorato della scrittura di Doyle con Il trattamento Ridarelli, e speravo che questa sorta di continuazione potesse almeno avvicinarsi al suo livello. Invece sembra fiacco fin dall'inizio, e non riesce a risollevarsi, anche se lo stile e' indubbiamente riconoscibile e qualche sorriso scappi qua e la'.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I adore Roddy Doyle’s stuff for adults, and this story for kids had all of his trademark humor. But I found the story too absurd for my particular taste. It was confusing to begin with and the charm of the characters didn’t come out until the very end. That, said, my 5-year-old granddaughter loved it.

[Brandon Le · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book Meanwhile Adventures is a very easy to connect type of book. The book has many characters that are easy to relate to. The book and story are easy to get lost in with a very simple but good plot. It mixes simple storytelling with a funny plot. A very fun short and easy read. I highly recommend if you’re trying to get a good laugh with a good short story.

[Fabian Williges · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ein nettes quatschiges Buch. Allerdings soll es oft wohl einfach zu witzig sein. Ich weiß nicht recht für welches Alter dieses Buch sinnvollerweise empfohlen werden sollte. Manche Witze erschließen sich erst dem älteren Kind oder gar Erwachsenen, während anderes einfach zu albern ist.
Das können Roddy Doyle und Andreas Steinhöfel echt besser!

[Benedetta · Rating 3 out of 5]

mi ha divertito, anche se per chi vuole conoscere Roddy doyle consiglio decisamente il trattamento ridarelli, il primo incontro con la famiglia Mack, e la storia natalizia rover salva il natale, che a me sono piaciuti molto.
chi invece gia' li conosce trovera' questo libro un gradino sotto.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both the 10yo and I laughed our way through this entirely ridiculous book. I know it's probably good for even younger kids, but if you're willing to do funny voices and wiggle your eyebrows a little while you read, you, too, can laugh yourselves silly at bedtime.

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can Rover save his owner from prison in this case of a misidentification of a simple invention that looks like a machine gun but acts like a saw.

A few laughs in this humorous book for reading with children (at least that should be all grown ups' excuse).

[Ciarán Ó Maolchallann · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was quite disappointed as I had highly rated the first two books in this series. It just seemed very long and unwieldy. My 6 year old son loved the first two books but kinda trailed off during this one, in essence, it was just a bit boring.

[Goral · Rating 5 out of 5]

BEST children's book ever, I remember this book out of the blue at least once every few months. Full of joy and love and I remember laughing very hard throughout each chapter I read. 10/10 would read it again.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my fave, but may appeal to kids who like a silly read.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Book is HILARIOUS! I love Roddy Doyle style and his lively imagination.

[David Mayilian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found the book in the bookshelf and decided to give it a whirl. It would definitely be much more funnier if I read it while I was a child.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

De los libros de Rover, éste es el que menos me ha gustado y aun así me he reído a carcajadas.
Cuidado con las babosas, no quieran conquistar el mundo XD

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious and completely ridiculous. Such a fun easy read and a nice quick read.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terzo della trilogia dei Ridarelli le avventure nel frattempo non ha deluso le nostre aspettative, ma ci ha accompagnato pagina dopo pagina condendo il tempo con tante sane risate.

[Bec D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Absurdist storytelling.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

The boys were in hysterics near the end. That means 5 stars automatically.

Much better than Rover Saves Christmas.

[Jaime · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as awesome as the first book (The Giggler Treatment), but the second half picked up and delivered!

[Kaitlyn]

I don't even know how to rate this, it was so ridiculous. WHO ARE YOU? BATTERIES INCLUDED!