Avril Crump and Her Amazing Clones Booktalk

Scholastic Booktalk

“Underneath the highjinks, there are actually some important philosophical questions about cloning....Fast-paced and quirky.” – Booklist

There was more going on at Leviticus Labs than anyone guessed, until Dr. Avril Crump blew up her fifth laboratory and three clones appeared in the wreckage.

Nobody knew how old Dr. Avril Crump was, although her short, chubby figure, almost bald head, and smooth, round, pink face made her look rather like an overgrown baby. But she was no baby, she was a scientist, a brilliant researcher dedicated to cleaning up environmental disaster. It was a shame that her most recent experiments had ended abruptly, when she blew up her lab. Well, actually, when she blew up four different labs! No, make that five different labs—she just blew up another one. But this last disaster wasn’t because of her research, it was because Professor Blut’s illegal cloning experiment and Avril’s most treasured possession, her Uncle Edgar’s chemistry set, got mixed up in a rather explosive way. The results of that explosion were three clones—a tall, skinny eighteenth century soldier, a dog with an attitude, and a little girl with one green and one amber eye.

Now all this was well and good, and very interesting besides, but it doesn’t even come close to explaining what else was going on at Leviticus Labs. To know about that, you’d have to go back fifteen years and find out about Professor Blut and his scandalous experiments that dragged the name of Leviticus Labs through the dirt, and then you’d have to figure out why a beautiful woman assassin was posing as a scientist at the labs, and sneaking around the halls spying, eavesdropping, and whispering into her cell phone, and then you’d have to figure out what all that had to do with Dr. Avril Crump, and what was going on with those clones.

Strange things are happening, things that involve not only Crump and the clones, but also the evil Blut, the dangerous assassin, and the unscrupulous Dr. Wetherby. And it’s only going to get more strange and weird the longer you wait, so come on in and join the fun!

This Booktalk was written by librarian and booktalking expert Joni R. Bodart