Mrs. Noodlekugel and Drooly the Bear (Mrs. Noodlekugel Series #3)

by Daniel Pinkwater, Adam Stower (Illustrator)

Overview

In a wonderfully loopy third episode, Nick and Maxine are surprised to meet Captain Noodlekugel, back from the sea with a somewhat untrainable bear.

When their father decides to compete to be speed-knitting champion of the world, Nick and Maxine are happy to stay with their babysitter, Mrs. Noodlekugel, along with her talking cats and four mice who wear glasses. What they don’t expect is a dripping-wet, whiskered man in the kitchen the next morning! Captain Noodlekugel has left his seafaring life to train animals for the circus, and he’s even brought with him a hefty bear named Drooly for practice. But whenever he tries to teach Drooly to dance, the bear wobbles and falls asleep on the tulips. When Drooly goes missing, the siblings must try to figure out where a big clumsy bear might go!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763666453
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	05/12/2015
Series:	Mrs. Noodlekugel Series , #3
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 7.56(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	510L (what's this?)
Age Range:	5 - 9 Years

About the Author

Daniel Pinkwater is the wildly popular author of many books for children, including the Mrs. Noodlekugel series, illustrated by Adam Stower, and Bear in Love, illustrated by Will Hillenbrand. He is a well-known authority on children’s books who appeared for many years on NPR’s Weekend Edition and now appears on The Bob Edwards Show on Sirius. Daniel Pinkwater lives in Hyde Park, New York.

Adam Stower has illustrated a number of children’s books, including Bottoms Up! and Sing a Song of Bottoms!, both by Jeanne Willis. He lives in Brighton, England.

Editorial Reviews

Fans of Mrs. Noodlekugel’s delightfully wacky and whimsical world will rejoice in Pinkwater’s newest offering.... Pinkwater presents another silly glimpse into the world of Mrs. Noodlekugel and her talking cats and mice.
—School Library Journal

The appeal is the loopy conversations about sardines—and the pictures.... Utterly, endearingly ridiculous.
—Kirkus Reviews

Abundant descriptions and eccentric humor showcase Pinkwater’s considerable ability to entertain. The amusing line drawings support the story. Fans will be lining up for this one
—Booklist

From the Publisher

04/01/2015
K-Gr 2—Fans of Mrs. Noodlekugel's delightfully wacky and whimsical world will rejoice in Pinkwater's newest offering. The latest installment welcomes new characters Drooly Bear along with Captain Noodlekugel, Mrs. Noodlekugel's "mister" who is usually "lost at sea." During a rare stint on land, the captain treks home and declares that he has given up a life on the water in the hopes of becoming an animal trainer. Young neighbors Nick and Maxine spend a whole four days in Mrs. Noodlekugel's care—their father is competing in the speed-knitting world championship and their mother is going along—and they tag along with the captain as he attempts to train Drooly. Antics and hilarity ensue as readers follow Nick, Maxine, and the captain on their journey to train the bear, all the while grappling with Drooly nodding off and wandering away during training. Readers should know that the captain acquired Drooly (along with a canoe) from an "Inuit fellow" while shipwrecked on a piece of flotsam. The Inuit man takes a great liking to the captain and explains that he is poor and has difficulty feeding the bear, who also fights with his husky dogs. The inclusion of this unfortunately stereotyped character is both odd and unnecessary. Readers encounter the Inuit man only in this brief scene. After trading the bear to the captain for a "Mexican dollar," a gold watch, and a fish, the Inuit man paddles away on a piece of driftwood. VERDICT Pinkwater presents another silly glimpse into the world of Mrs. Noodlekugel and her talking cats and mice, but here's hoping the archaic stereotypes get lost at sea in the next installment.—Amy M. Laughlin, Darien Library, CT

School Library Journal

2015-02-16
Is there a Mr. Noodlekugel? Apparently the answer is yes. Capt. Noodlekugel is described as "a little man with wonderful whiskers." He's just come back from the sea to visit his wife, and his whiskers are pretty spectacular. They're an endless series of white waves, and they stretch several inches past the end of his face in the illustrations, as though Stower couldn't stop drawing. They look as if they might float off into the sky, like an altostratus cloud. Along with the whiskers, Pinkwater has given the artist all sorts of wonderful things to draw: cake with delicious mushrooms on top and the titular Drooly, a long-snouted bear that the captain is teaching to dance. There's not much plot: the bear is lost and found again. Though nothing really happens in the book, it is hilarious. Even when the characters are just eating dinner, they eat it backward, starting with vegetable cake for dessert and ending with chocolate soup. In its relative eventlessness, the book is a lot like life, but with more bears, as well as mice in nightshirts. The appeal is the loopy conversations about sardines—and the pictures. The artist has surpassed his work in the earlier books, with tightly detailed drawings of things that could never exist and glorious, textured gray ink washes everywhere. Also, the mice wear tiny glasses. Utterly, endearingly ridiculous. (Fiction. 5-9)

Kirkus Reviews