Magic Pickle and the Planet of the Grapes by Scott Morse
April 14th, 2008 by Laura Moncur in Literature
Unshelved has recommended Magic Pickle and the Planet of the Grapes by Scott Morse.
The Magic Pickle secretly fights crime from his HQ under Jo Jo’s bed (her house is built on top of the lab that created him). He uses his crime computer and super powers to fight the wicked fruits and veggies of The Brotherhood of Evil Produce. He’s detected some sinister citrus at the Farmer’s Market. One of Jo Jo’s classmates, has brought a strange machine to school, along with a wagonload of fruit (she was soured by the free lemonade). It’s the start of The Raizin’s plan to create a planet of grapes!
Here is Amazon’s review of the book:
Scott Morse introduces one of the most hilarious superheroes ever: a flying, green Magic Pickle!
Magic Pickle is a secret weapon developed in a secret military lab—under little JoJo Wigwam’s bedroom floor. The fearless dill superhero meets his match in this feisty eight-year-old. Together they go after Ray Sin, a renegade raisin from the Brotherhood of Evil Produce. Ray Sin has a dastardly plan: to turn every human being on the planet into big, juicy, mindless grapes, so he can rule the world!
Ray Sin has tricked the new kid in town into becoming his hapless helper and is using the class science fair as his cover. He’s got everybody in the school—kids, the principal, even the janitor—eating big gobs of grapes . . . and turning into roly-poly purple fruits!
Magic Pickle and JoJo act fast: with the skillful use of a juicemaker, they save the day and capture Ray Sin, whose criminal career is now all dried up.
I have to admit that the idea of sentient fruits and vegetables is hard for me to swallow. I can believe in self-aware PLANTS, mind you, but fruits and vegetables have been removed from the plant (or fallen off if left alone), so they seem like amputated limbs more than characters on their own.
The California Raisins, however, they were TOTALLY believable.