Middle Grade Monday and Audiobook Review: All Ears by Stuart Gibbs

Image: Simon & Schuster

All Ears by Stuart Gibbs. FunJungle #9. Unabridged e-audio, ~8 hours. Read by Gibson Frazier. Simon & Schuster Audio, May, 2025. 9781668134696. Review of audiobook borrowed from pubic library.

Middle Grade Monday features All Ears by Stuart Gibbs. This ninth installment does not disappoint. Teddy Fitzroy and his father have been called to investigate an elephant that went missing from a nearby ranch. While there, Teddy receives a call from his best friend, Xavier, who was arrested for trespassing and vandalism on a construction site. His loyalty is divided. His best friend is understandably upset and wants him to come immediately, but he needs to look for clues while they are still fresh. This causes some friction between the two.

As usual, Gibbs weaves a environmental themes (habitat loss, big-game hunting) in with plenty of suspense as well as humor. These plot-driven mysteries remain fresh and fun. 

I had forgotten my promise not to read these with my ears. The narrator is serviceable, but this first-person narrative is told by a teenager, and the voice in my ears is clearly adult.

Teen Tuesday and Audiobook Review: Roxy by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman

Image: Simon & Schuster

Roxy by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman. Unabridged e-audiobook, ~11 hours. Read by Michael Crouch, Megan Tusing, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Candace Thaxton. Simon & Schuster Audio, November, 2021. 9781797133416. (Review of e-audio borrowed from the public library.)

Teen Tuesday features a thriller/ allegory by the father-son writing team that brought us Dry. In their latest collaboration, entitled Roxy inspired by the opioid crisis, they personify the drugs, Oxycontin and Adderall, two medications that can be therapeutic, but also are also addictive. The multiple perspectives shift between Roxy and Addison in the first-person and siblings Isaac and Ivy in the third. The reader knows that one of the siblings will die from page one. Then, the story flashes back to several months earlier. Isaac injures himself in a scuffle with her drug-dealing boyfriend while retrieving his hard-partying sister, Ivy from a party. He's an honor student and athlete with hopes to earn a soccer scholarship to college. He has to play through his injury, so his nana gives him one of her pain pills. It works, and Isaac is able to play. Meanwhile, Ivy decides to buckle down and catch up with her schoolwork, so she agrees to take Adderall for her ADHD. The results are remarkable. She's able to focus and stay on task.

Roxy and Addison have other plans for the pair though. They make a friendly wager to see who will be the first to bring their plus-ones to the "party," where they will be tempted by stronger substances. Suspense builds as Isaac becomes dependent on Roxy and Ivy seems to turn her life around.

This character-driven novel is fast-paced and raw. The narrative style of each reader is pitch perfect. Mature teen readers, especially fans of Dry, will marvel at the world the Misters Shusterman have created-one in which good people make bad choices.

Middle Grade Monday and Audiobook Review: Bear Bottom by Stuart Gibbs

Image: Simon & Schuster

Bear Bottom by Stuart Gibbs. FunJungle #7. Unabridged e-audiobook, ~7 hours, 12 minutes. Read by Gibson Frazier. Simon & Schuster Audio, May, 2021. 9781797123608. (Review of e-audio borrowed from public library.)

Happy Monday readers! I apologize for skipping Fact Friday last week. I read an amazing informational book that I can't wait to share, but just couldn't settle down to write the review it deserved. The events of the last eight-plus weeks have been a challenge to my concentration. 

Middle Grade Monday features Bear Bottom by TMS favorite, Stuart Gibbs. Theodore Roosevelt Fitzroy is back in the seventh installment of the FunJungle series. Teddy, his parents and some FunJungle employees traveled to Yellowstone with JJ McCracken and his family. They are staying at a bison ranch just outside Yellowstone National Park. JJ is friends with the owner and is thinking about buying the place. Several bison have gone missing recently, and JJ asks Teddy if he'd put his detective skills to work in order to get to the bottom of the mystery. 

As soon as Teddy starts, his investigation becomes a double investigation after Sasquatch, an enormous grizzly bear invades the ranch house and a rare and valuable necklace goes missing. Did the bear inadvertently eat the necklace while foraging for food? If so, someone needs to track Sasquatch and wait for nature to take its course.

Any new book by Stuart Gibbs is an auto-purchase for me. I don't even need to read them in order to book talk them. All I need to do is tell my students that there's a new Gibbs book in the library and it's checked out immediately with a wait list for the year. This is the reason why I didn't get to read Spy School for ages and ages. Mr. Gibbs always keeps his plots moving in unexpected, often hilarious ways. Woven into all the lighthearted fun are messages, usually about the environment.

This is the first FunJungle book that I read with my ears and I think I will read future installments with my eyes. The narrator was adequate, but didn't sound appropriately youthful to me and his female voices grated, especially Candace McCracken's. 

Teen Tuesday and Audiobook Review: Five Feet Apart by Rachel Lippincott

Image: Simon & Schuster

Five Feet Apart by Rachel Lippincott. Unabridged downloadable e-audiobook. ~7 hours. Narrated by Joy Osmanski and Corey Brill. Simon & Schuster Audio, November, 2018. 9781534437357. (Review of e-audiobook borrowed from public library. Own hc.)

Stella is a high school senior who has CF, cystic fibrosis. She has managed her disease like a champ, even going so far as to develop an app to schedule her many meds and has achieved some online fame as a YouTube vlogger. She's also on the transplant list. 

Enter new patient and CF bad boy, Will, whose b-cepacia infection has knocked him off the transplant list. Now he's counting the days till his eighteenth birthday when he will cease all treatment and walk out of the hospital to live a little before dying. 

We all know where that's heading, don't we? I purchased this book as requested by a student. I had no idea this was a screenplay turned into a book. Teens who love sick lit like, The Fault in Our Stars (which I did not), and are not overly concerned with medical inaccuracies* (which drive me bonkers) or the use of tired romantic tropes will love this book. To be fair, my teenaged self would've loved this. I'm sure the movie had its fans who failed to notice the medical goofs and plot holes thanks to photogenic actors, swelling music, a cool soundtrack and lots of close-ups.

*OMG! The medical inaccuracies! These three were the most egregious among many. 

Girl with 27% lung function flying up four flights of stairs w/o O2? In what universe?

Girl with 27% lung function has infected g-tube and manages to keep it hidden from her doctor and nurses? Not a chance. 


Girl with 27% lung function undergoes surgery with general anesthesia and survives? Okay probable, but is transferred totally loopy from recovery to her room in a WHEELCHAIR? Patients are never released from the recovery room in a wheel chair or as out of it as this character was.