Lions & Liars

By Kate Beasley

Hi! Have you ever felt like your friends don’t appreciate you? Well, Frederick has. Frederick doesn’t like his name at all. His name is Frederick Frederickson. And his friends have an opinion about life. They think that some people are lions (like a popular kid named Devin), some people are gazelles (the people who lions prey on), meerkats (who are just there) and fleas (so tiny that they can be squished by a meerkat). In his friends’ opinions, they were meerkats and Frederick was a flea. Everything seemed to go wrong for him. When he asked for more than one chicken wing, he got just one. But when Devin asked for more than one chicken wing, he got like 20!

Frederick was looking forward to the one day of his life when he could get away – on a cruise! So he gets all excited, then he goes home to find out that the cruise that he was supposed to go on the next day had been cancelled because of a storm that supposed to be headed near the cruise. Frederick’s friend Joel's birthday was that day, also. And Frederick felt like he couldn’t go on the cruise because he had spent the entire day going on about how he was going to miss Joel’s birthday party because of a cruise. And he was angry at Joel for calling him a flea. So he knew he just couldn’t go or he would be teased to death by his friends. But his mom made him go so that she wouldn’t have to prepare a meal that night.

When he got there, Joel said he had a surprise for him. He took him out to the water and showed him his dad’s small boat. He made fun of him by calling it the “cruise” he was supposed to go on. But Joel had given it to him, so Frederick got on the boat. Suddenly, the boat started moving farther and farther away from Joel’s house.

The next morning, Frederick woke up and he had no idea where he was. Frederick got out of the boat and went in search for some food. The last time he had eaten had been lunch at school. He was super hungry because he fed his hamburger to an alligator who was trying to catch him in the boat. Soon, he found food – pancakes. And they were delicious! An old woman named Miss Betty called them her homemade pancakes. She scolded him for not being at the meeting, yet he was so hungry that he was slightly confused, but he didn’t worry about it. He thought to himself, “What meeting?” Then, Miss Betty told him about Camp Omigoshee.

Soon, a man named Benjamin came up and told Frederick that he had better get his badge on and get ready for the meeting. He turned over the badge and saw a name on it: Dashiell Blackwood.

Who is Dashiell Blackwood? What will Frederick do next? And how will he get home? As I always say, read the book to find out!

I recommend this book to readers who would like a story that’s exciting with heartbreak and emotion about someone trying to be what he is not.

A few helpful things I like to say about the books I read:

“Run and Get Mom” (how I describe the scariness factor):
There were two scary parts – one big and one medium. The others were little, minor things.

“Yucky-Lovey Stuff” (how I describe the romance factor):
Zero. None. Nada. There was literally no mention of love in this book.