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Utterly bonkers and enormously fun for all that, full of wackiness, crazy inventions, tight corners and one seriously big (and invisible) problem to solve, The Genius Factor: How to Capture an Invisible Cat by Paul Tobin (@PaulTobin) with illustrations by Thierry Lafontaine (@ThierryArt) has had me and my eleven year old giggling with delight.

It’s a madcap tale of one bright Nate Bannister, who – rather admirably – makes a conscious effort to keep his life interesting; every Friday the 13th he chooses to do three things which are either a challenge or likely to bring some adventure. This year this includes creating an enormous, invisible cat who does indeed make life rather more exciting… by going on the rampage.

Fortunately Nate has a loyal friend (indeed, his only friend), Delphine, and together they try all sorts of things to stop the crazy cat from destroying their neighbourhood. Inventions galore and smart thinking abound, but it’s not at all straight forward, because the Red Death Tea Society (ominous baddies of the most evil variety, who just happen to have astonishing tea brewing skills) are set on preventing Nate and Delphine from saving the day.

This riotous book, ideal for 9-12s, celebrates being a little bit different and being curious and clever. Brilliantly, it does this with a great dose of silliness and laughter, so it always feels exhilarating and never sanctimonious. Pacey, eccentric, highly imaginative and with characters and a story line likely to appeal to both boys and girls, I’d suggest How to Capture an Invisible Cat to anyone who loves off-the-wall adventure and thinking outside the box.

There’s something very mysterious about the Red Death Tea Society and so we couldn’t resist having a go at making up some tea they might enjoy. We gathered our tea making ingredients; a mixture of warm spices (cinammon, cardomum, cloves, star anise), fresh herbs (rosemary, sage mint), citrus zest (lemon and orange) and sugar lumps, plus small muslin squares to make the teabags (alternatively you could make teabags out of coffee filters using these instructions, or be inspired by this tea bag themed pinterest board).

Deciding on tea flavours was a bit like mixing up magic potions.

Once the flavours were carefully selected, the muslin squares (about 12cm long on each side) were tied up with red thread, and a tea bag label was stapled onto the thread (using a knot to hold it in place).

M designed the logo for the teabags, but if you’d like to use them you can download them here (pdf).

Once all our teabags were ready, we made boxes for them:

(Again, if you’d like to re-use the logo, here it is in a large size, idea for using on boxes.)

We filled some our boxes up (you’d better watch out, in case you find one on your doorstep!)…

But we also had to brew some tea for ourselves:

And of course, a cup of tea without a biscuit is no good, so we made some invisible cat cookies.

Yes, you may be able to see them, but this is only because they contain that magical invisible cat de-cloaking device (spoiler alert): peanut butter. (Here’s the recipe we used.)

Whilst making tea and eating peanut butter cat biscuits we listened to:

Other activities which might work well alongside reading How to Capture an Invisible Cat include:

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Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of this book by the publisher and this post is the final part of a blog tour that’s been travelling around the world:

Monday, March 21 — Daddy Mojo (US)

Tuesday, March 22 — Nerdy Book Club (US)

Wednesday, March 23 — Jenuine Cupcakes (US)

Thursday, March 24 — This Kid Reviews Books (US)

Friday, March 25 — Fiction Fascination (UK)

Monday, March 28 — Gobblefunked (ANZ)

Tuesday, March 29 — MumtoFive.com (ANZ)

Wednesday, March 30 — Playing by the Book (UK)

The cover has been unveiled for the first issue of new comic series, Plants vs. Zombies: Bully For You. We’ve embedded the full image above—what do you think?

Artist Ron Chan created the jacket design and writer Paul Tobin wrote the story. Dark Horse Comics will release this book on June 17th.

Hello all in the Land of Blog!!!!! (I don't know why but Blogger decided to make my whole post in BOLD) It's Darth Bill with a bunch of stuff to cover, so let's go!!!!!

First we have some additional comments on "The Lightning Thief" movie:

From Nannah V: "I took my two grandsons to see this movie. Jeff is almost 11 and Bobby is 6. They loved it! Now they want to read the book! They are also excited about the two movies they saw intros for. "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" & "The the Last Airbender". Jeff has read all of the Wimpy kid books and they are very big fans of the Airbender cartoon. Personally I agree, I wish the actors looked younger. I have a hard time believing that they were 13. They looked more like 16."

From Mrs. Quinn: "You guys hit most of my beefs with the movie: that Percy was 15 instead of 13, and that the consequent love interest story was more pronounced (really not in the book); that it just wasn't as funny, with Percy being rather flat in the movie and flat-out-funny in the books; that there were lots of changes from the book. I was really hoping for a closer rendering of the book, because its really a great one. I'm concerned that they may not make future movies, just because the story lines in book 1 were truncated, especially the parts that are important for the future movies! But if the money's there, they probably will... STILL, very worth seeing and a fun action flick. AND if it gets kids to read the book(s) - which we already have - then it's all good."

From Anyomous : "It left out my favorite part with echidna and the chimera.
giant fan of the books."

Okay now for some ultra cool Graphic Novel and Comic Reviews: