A Weird Case Of Super-Goo

Barnes and The Brains #5

by Kenneth Oppel

When Giles’s eccentric Aunt Lillian wants to look younger, she invents a gooey cream to make her wish come true. The only problem is that it turns her into a kid!

Genres: Fantasy

72 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

I was born in 1967 in Port Alberni, a mill town on Vancouver Island, British Columbia but spent the bulk of my childhood in Victoria, B.C. and on the opposite coast, in Halifax, Nova Scotia...At around twelve I decided I wanted to be a writer (this came after deciding I wanted to be a scientist, and then an architect). I started out writing sci-fi epics (my Star Wars phase) then went on to swords and sorcery tales (my Dungeons and Dragons phase) and then, during the summer holiday when I was fourteen, started on a humorous story about a boy addicted to video games (written, of course, during my video game phase). It turned out to be quite a long story, really a short novel, and I rewrote it the next summer. We had a family friend who knew Roald Dahl - one of my favourite authors - and this friend offered to show Dahl my story. I was paralysed with excitement. I never heard back from Roald Dahl directly, but he read my story, and liked it enough to pass on to his own literary agent. I got a letter from them, saying they wanted to take me on, and try to sell my story. And they did.

Reviews

[Tommy Verhaegen · Rating 5 out of 5]

After a fiasco with a new device that Tina built the hair of Giles turns orange. He is so mad about that so that he breaks up with his genius friends. At home his loss is compensated by the arrival of his aunt who is coming to visit. After a failed experiment (or very succesfull depending on your point of view) his aunt becomes physically the same age as Giles. But... mentally she stays a 36-year old adult with a lot of bad habits.
That speaks volumes to the target audience of the story when she smokes, stays up late to watch television and generally misbehaves. It gets funny when Giles mother starts dealing with het sister in a different way: she starts treating her as an 11-year old child. After a complication at school the aunt wants to return physically to her real age, hence Giles is obliged to hire his former friends, the genius team.
Again a very funny story with plenty of action and a form of psychology dedicated to the targeted audience. Although the plot is essentially different from the 4 previous ones there are enough elements in common to speak of a series of books.

[Steven R. McEvoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barnes' kooky Aunt Lillian comes for a visit. Barnes' mom does not get along well with her younger sister. Lillian is working on a cream to reduce wrinkles, and it appears to work a little too well, for soon she looks 11 not 36. The Barnes decide to have an intervention after a week with a young Lillian. If Lillian wants to look 11, she will have to act 11 - go to school, have a bed time, a limit on TV time. Soon she realizes she does not want to be a child again. Barnes turns to the Quarks to find a way to reverse the process.

These books originally published by Scholastic Canada between 1994 and 2004 have been re-released by Harper Collins Canada. Kenneth Oppel has created a fun series that will be enjoyed by young readers and the young at heart.

[Melissa King · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

[Nikki in Niagara · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Tina tests one of her new inventions on Giles and his hair turns orange he's finally had it with the geniuses and quits the team. When he gets home he finds out his Aunt Lillian is on her way for a visit. Aunt Lillian is Mom's younger sister and drives mom crazy with her lackadaisical lifestyle, especially since Mom had to look after her all the time when they were young and Lillian was always in trouble. But Giles likes Lillian as something fun is always in the works when she's around and this time she's working on an anti-wrinkle cream. Giles helps her mix up the batch from an old recipe and when Lillian puts on the goo her wrinkles do go away but she also keeps changing until she's turned back into an 11 year old. Lillian loves it but when Giles' mum and dad have had enough of the smoking, vodka drinking, slob of an 11 year-old Lillian who refuses to give up her new found youth, they decide to treat her as an 11-year-old and take away the vices, impose a bedtime and send her to school. This one was lot of fun! Of course, Giles ends up needing to call in Tina and Kevin to help him solve the problem and the solution is a great ending. I'm only disappointed that Lillian was described as a practitioner of the occult at the beginning (tarot, seances, etc.) especially as it is not an element of the story. Lillian could have been a hippie or the like with the same results. Otherwise, the plot is one of the best in the series and Oppel keeps the series fresh by switching things around each time and here we have Giles and his Aunt featured as the main characters.

[Anne Patkau · Rating 4 out of 5]

8 full page silly swirly black-line cartoon sketches for 8 chapters from "Weak Brainwaves" to "Spontaneous Display of Responsibility". A fun look at benefits of child vs adult.

Giles angrily quits the genius business with friends Kevin and Tina Quark, when a glitch in her latest invention, a helmet to project brainwaves, turns his hair orange.When irresponsible Aunt Lillian's herbal concoction shrinks her from 36 to same as Giles 12, she overstays her welcome with the Barnes, and they desperately turn to the Brain Drainer gadget.

The lazy immature aunt has to also act adult to energize the power. She quits a few years short, and her flighty character likes orange hair. But why not stay the youngest possible before paunch and grey, say 21 with the physical benefits of both youth and age?