We belong to a book club called “Denver Read and Feed,” and the club takes turns selecting a fiction book for everyone to read and hosts a meeting with a sit down meal to discuss the book or whatever else anyone wants to share. It was my turn, and the book I selected was “Angry Pigs Organized Against Gerbils: The Farmer Island War.” I am the author of that book and Andrew Brown, one of the four grandchildren listed in the book as “Creative Staff and Illustrators” attended the meeting. (The other three grandchildren are Davis K. Hobbs, Clayain M. Hobbs, and Campbell E. Brown.)

One tradition of the club is for each of the members to record their comments about the book in the “official record” and to rate it from one to ten, with one being pathetic and ten being excellent. I’ll turn over the review to the members after noting that Cathy and Tara were unable to attend, but Tara provided comments and a score by email.

Steve—What can I say, I loved the book. The story was original and well structured. The illustrations were very creative as well. Great book…8

Paul—This inspired me to look into publishing one of my own books. Great collaborative effort with the grandkids. I really liked the rat and pigeon spies. It surprised me that the kids wanted there to be killed animals in the book, but kids are more precocious that I was at that age. Good job. 7

Barb—Good story and delightful idea to co-write a book, granddad and grandchildren. 7.5

Steph—My favorite part of the book is the collaboration between the generations in making the book. My favorite part of the story is when the pigs matured (evolved) enough to realize they didn’t need war to fix a problem. 7

Frank—I think the story of how the book came about was at least as good as the book. I liked the escalation of the story and how the conflict was eventually resolved. Great illustrations as well. 7

Sally—Very interesting story about war and pigs. I liked the kid-friendly treatment of topics that were, frankly, above my head. I am interested to see where the story goes—next time, more character development would make it even better. Great illustrations and collaboration! 8.5

Farrel—Of course I loved this book, since I wrote it with the grandkids. 10 (of course!)

Sheryl—Cute book—nice story—painful to watch the person write—a fun and easy read. 7.5

Tara—I absolutely loved that you got your grandchildren involved in doing a book with you. What an amazing and powerful experience for them…! On content…my favorite part was the illustrations. They are so charming, intuitive and well done. I would have liked to have been there last night to tell the illustrator(s) personally. 🙂 I agree they should be darker in the next one, if only to make their specialness more apparent. The storyline had proper conflict and a positive resolution, which was important to this story. If I had any constructive criticisms…it would be to include more storyline detailing the characters themselves and their relationships with others. That being said, however, I loved the book!!! 10

Andrew—I think the book could have used a few more explosions, but overall, I really loved the book and my first time in book club. I also had a great time writing it with my grandad. 9 (Andrew was pleased  that several book club members had him autograph his illustrations.

The composite score was 7.8, which is higher than the overall average for books read and rated by the members. Farrel and Andrew’s ratings were not included in that result. 

Information about the sequel is included in the “Continuing Adventures” link on our web site.