Too Small to Fail by Morris Gleitzman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I have been enjoying audiobooks a lot lately and this one was better than some of them.  It suffered a bit less from the overacting sound of some of the other audiobooks I have listened to.  The other significant advantage of the book over some other recent "reads" is that the plot was less predictable than many of them.  There were quite a few plot twists that added an extra dimension to the story.

And, like many books set in and written by Australians, it also has a strong sense of family.  I like this about the Australian books and wish I found it more in American books.  The Penderwicks (the 3rd book of which I also listened to lately) has a great love of family, too, but, for some reason, it was just a bit TOO sweet for me.  This book felt more real.  I wish Australian books were easier to get.  Audiobooks surprisingly are pretty good values.  I would guess that that is because there is a significant savings in shipping - shipping bits and bytes costs less than shipping dead trees.

I have read other books by Gleitzman and found them a bit silly in places.  This one didn't seem to suffer from that for me.  It dealt with a much more serious topic, but it wasn't oppressive in that respect either.  I feel he struck a good balance between serious topic and hero's adventure. 

I enjoyed it.



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