Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 11/01/2018 For Mason’s birthday, his parents take him and two friends, Will and Zoe, for a sleepover at the Natural History Museum, where their personal guide sends them on a scavenger hunt to explore the exhibits and choose a spot for sleeping. Rhyming clues lead them to the Earth and Space Room, the Hall of Dinosaurs, the Hall of African Mammals, and several more. After completing their mission, they celebrate Mason’s birthday in the party room before bedding down for the night. The story moves at a good pace, and readers can also trace the action on the endpapers, which offer attractive, detailed floor plans of the museum, along with a key identifying 12 locations featured in the book. In the digital artwork, the characters’ expressions are exaggerated in a cartoonlike manner, but the illustrations achieve subtler, more creative, and more amusing effects with the use of varied perspectives and, especially, light and shadows. An appended section introduces 10 American natural history museums and a dozen other institutions that offer sleepovers. An imaginative introduction to visiting museums. - Copyright 2018 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 12/01/2018 Gr 1–4—Mason is celebrating his birthday with his best friends Zoe and Will at the Natural History Museum. Their tour guide has created a series of riddles and, if the group solves them all, Mason will be allowed to pick out where they will sleep during their overnight stay. As the adventurous trio traverse the museum answering riddles and exploring each exhibit, Mason tries to figure out which exhibit would make the coolest spot for a sleepover. LeFrak's delightful tale will inspire children to visit museums and to explore new concepts on their own. The plot is simple and fun as readers try to guess the answers to the riddles and guess via hidden clues which exhibit Mason will eventually choose. There is some higher-level vocabulary, but it is easily understandable through the illustrations. Bucs has created some fantastically entertaining spreads highlighting a child's view of museums. Each picture gives details to the story, revealing more about museums and the characters' journey. He has hidden multiple clues as to the final exhibition throughout his drawings and map, and if kids watch the shadows they can see another story unfold as Mason and his friends continue their quest. Overall, this is a whale of a tale to hopefully inspire more museum trips for children and spark some inquisitive minds. VERDICT A good selection to pique children's interest in a scientific field, as well as inspire them to have their own adventures.—Margaret Kennelly, iSchool at Urbana-Champaign, IL - Copyright 2018 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

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