Belly Up: FunJungle, Book 1

My fourth grader loves these books- they do have solid ecological messages and good mystery storylines. However-This series is so full of fat shaming and making fun of people (even the main character’s best friend) for their eating habits and inability to find clothing that fits well. It distracts from the storylines and feels almost like bullying to read it. The eighth book finally didn’t have any fat shaming so I am thinking the author got the the message that kids these days just don’t find that funny anymore, but several of the the other books have some pretty extreme descriptions and I would hesitate to recommend them especially to a kid who may already struggle with body image issues .

An inventive and fun mystery set at a new zoo / theme park in Texas. Due to the animal theme, I was expecting the story to be targeted at a younger audience. However, like the author's other main series, Spy School, this first entry contains a surprising amount of swearing from the adult characters in the book. But Gibbs dials that back a good deal for the later books in the series. Still, I plan to skip this series for my younger daughter until she's a few years older. Also as the Common Sense review mentions, there is a scene where the main character (12) and an older teen girl strip down to their underwear to enter a pool as they investigate a hippo's murder. There are also a variety of gross out scenes describing dead animals being autopsied, and one where a hippo's carcass drops from a height and explodes in a gory wave over a bunch of bystanders.

My 9 year old just finished this book and while he enjoyed it, he reported several curse words and "extensive use of the word crap". He did not feel that these words added to the story, instead they were distracting and useless. The story was hilarious and offered a good mystery, but he said there were too many swear words.

My son found this book very entertaining but was put off by the frequency use of the words "damn" and "crap" and the use of "Jesus Christ" as a swear word. The language is not appropriate for the target audience in our opinion.