Booktalk #1

Every kid's dream is to be named Most Valuable Player. But how many ever dream that the game is a race around the world (no flying allowed) in just 40 days? That's the challenge Adam Story faces in the Great Global Game. As the player for the *Magellan Voyage Project, he competes against 23 other players for a four-million-dollar prize! Of course the trackers in red sweat suits and hoodies with their blowguns and sleeping darts don't make things easy. Nor does the nefarious Baron von Sheepsbottom, who will stop at nothing to stop Adam. But it's time to go — the game's afoot!  (Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Book Award 2008)

Booktalk #2

Have you ever read a book where a bunch of twelve year olds have to travel around the world in fourty days or less? My favorite part was when Adam Story got sent to his first detention center.  I would recommend this book to kids in third or bigger grades.   (Babe Ruth, Farmington library)

Booktalk #3

How many of you fourth graders have ever taken a trip around the world without your parents? I mean, circumnavigate the globe, totally alone, from where you live, and return in forty-days or less, and do this without taking a plane. Oh, and that means, you have to use just surface transportation. You know, a bus, train, ship, or taxi.  Hmmm?  Not many of you.

Well, meet Adam Story, a fifth-grade boy without friends, a loner-type, living with his mom in a run-down apartment. He'™s told he's a good candidate for such a mission, and that he can't tell his mom his whereabouts for the entire forty days.  Adam would be given all the money he needed for transportation, food, four-star hotels, and help provided by his team, the Magellan Voyage Project or MVP*. And best of all, the prize for accomplishing such a mission would be four million dollars. Adam is determined to participate and finish as any fifth-grader would be.

However, what Adam didn't know and wasn't told by Prince Olioli, was that he was just one of many fifth-grade players representing teams in a game created by royals determined to keep their status as kings, queens, and lords.  Was this a game or truly something serious? Adam didn't really know. With all the temptations to quit and leave for home at any time, Adam finds he does have the willpower and the desire to finish.  With tricksters at his back and on every street corner, it seems Adam is destined to fail. Will Adam make it by himself? Or, will he need a little help from (his) friends, friends he isn't used to making?  Get ready for a ride of reading that is full of surprises, mischief, and outlandish characters.

SUBJECTS:      Voyages around the world -- Fiction.
                        Voyages and travels -- Fiction.
                        Travel -- Fiction.
                        Contests -- Fiction.
                        Adventure and adventurers -- Fiction.
                        Adventure fiction.

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