children's fiction/fantasy-adventure. This was okay, but maybe about 150-200 pages too long. I was getting really bored around p.200 (there were action sequences, but they didn't really serve to propel the story any further) so skipped ahead to read the last 50 pages or so, and sure enough didn't miss anything important, just filler. If I were a kid I probably would've stuck with it, but since I've read enough books to know there are better things out there, it didn't measure up as well. Still, I would recommend this as a read-aloud or to kids that, like I say, just want something to read and don't have discriminating tastes yet. ( )

Inventive, fun, touching, action-filled story. The female lead, Fiona--the smart one--is an excellent role model for girls. Kids with realistic family and peer problems who buck up and save the world. ( )

River, Fiona, and Freak arrive at their bus stop one morning to find a sofa. A sofa, it turns out, that seems to know more than it should. A zucchini green crayon between the cushions leads them to meet their neighbor in the walled off Underhill place…and then to uncover a vast diabolical plot by one of the world’s richest men.

The three misfit friends’ adventure takes them across the nearby wasteland of Hellsboro, where an underground coal seam fire makes the ground too hot for people to live there; through a secured compound to search for a secret portal to the planet Indorsia; and even into an auction full of strange characters who are interested in paying thousands of dollars for a single green crayon.

This book is tons of fun – it’s full of humor and weird situations, with a little bit of kid family drama to keep it real (if you can even use the word “real” to describe a story with a talking furniture set…).

There are several references to other books, so the more you’ve read (like A Wrinkle in Time and The Lord of the Rings), the more you’ll feel like you’re in on a little secret. ( )

The author blurb says that Henry Clark has contributed articles to Mad Magazine, and that comes as no surprise. This is a fast paced sci fi adventure with plenty of absurdist humor that will appeal to twelve year olds everywhere. There is also a vein of seriousness - the main characters have suffered serious losses in their everyday lives, which they have to deal with while also saving the world. The quick references to the Wizard of Oz, Wrinkle in Time, and Discworld were fun injokes for fantasy fans.

PS If you're a Discworld fan you'll notice that the Sofa seems to be a close relative of the Luggage. There can be no higher praise for a piece of furniture. ( )

This is a Middle Grade book (Lexile score: 730) about the friendship between three seventh-graders who discover a sofa dumped near their bus stop one day. They fish around the cushions and discover a number of seemingly quotidian items that will actually ensnare them on a SFF adventure! The writing and narration pace bog down a little plot-wise at times, and there's a lot going on (maybe too much?); but there are some imminently quotable and funny lines that keep the listener engaged. Bryan Kennedy narrated very clearly and does well with character delineation; but there were times he missed textual cues (e.g. delivering a line with liveliness when the text reads "without much enthusiasm"); he mispronounced "Guernica" 38 out of of a possible 38 times (He went for a bastardized Spanish pronunciation); and he had an odd way of breaking up. a lot of sentences, like he didn't realize the sentence ended further along. than where he ended it. (Like that!) If asked outright, I would recommend the print over the audio. ( )