[Ad- gifted product] If you frequent the blog, you will know that Kai is a big fan of Horrible Histories. Because of this, we have all of the Horrible History books there is, and he’s read them all. In looking to find new books for him to enjoy, we found Ted and His Time Travelling Toilet; Shakespeare Shake-Up, a book that feels like it’s in the same vane as Horrible History; an educational book that has funny (for tweens) humour, an interesting to follow story, and some history thrown into the book!
Shakespeare Shake-Up begins with Ted, mainly talking about the book itself and attempting to trick you into licking your own elbow. Something that Kai then tried to get his siblings to do, after reading it from the book. A glorious start. The book then continues on to tell the story of Ted, who is currently in drama class and wants to audition to be in the school play; Romeo and Juliet, so that he can kiss Chloe and marry her someday. The issue is, Ted is a bad actor and doesn’t think he will get the role.
Somewhere along the way, Ted sits on a toilet that transports him through time, and then he is able to get lessons from William Shakespeare himself, which will surely help! There are lots of quotes from Shakespeare, who has quite the sense of humour, as well as some fun moments to keep kids interested.
Kai is a quick reader, and ended up reading the entire book after school one day, repeating out bits that he found funny and asking about Shakespeare. He has not actually read any of the Ted and His Time-Travelling Toilet books (and this series has a lot of them, including some about Kai’s favourite subjects), so he said it was very good and that he would read more of them! The idea of a time traveling toilet was very funny to Kai, though he said he’d prefer the time traveling banana milkshake that was mentioned in the book, because obviously, he’d need unlimited milkshakes.
It is great to see more of these educational books, with some funny humour thrown in, aged at getting tweens into reading and learning! The different fonts in the book are a nice touch, and unlike Horrible History books, this book follows a set kid with a story, and doesn’t contain any gore or weird stuff that makes you squirm a bit, and instead showcases a school kid like Kai, just trying to learn more so that he can nail his audition!
This sounds like a fun read and totally something my 10 year old son would love. I still have the Horrible History books that belonged to my brothers, now my kids read them.
Horrible Histories will be around forever, but this is a great addition.
I will check it out, my son is 12 years old and he is an avid reader. I wonder if we can find Ted and his time travelling toilet in our local library. I will have to check.
The series around Ted and his Travelling Toilet is really great too! Hope you find them!
That looks fun to read. I’d appreciate reading that book myself. Which reminds me, I haven’t read a book in six months.
Oh noes!
I love the book, I think my niece would love this, too.
It is a neat book!
Anything that gets the kids reading! And now I want a banana milkshake. 😉
Lmao! They are tasty!
My 11 year old reads so much and would love this book!! I might buy it for her for the Summer holidays.
It’s a really great one!
It looks like an interesting and fun book to read for the kids.
Kai really loved it!