Marco? Polo! (The Time Warp Trio Series #16), Vol. 16 » (Reprint)

Jon Scieszka is the author of The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!, the Time Warp Trio series, The Stinky Cheese Man, and a truckload of other books that inspire kids to want to read. His work as an elementary school teacher and as founder of a literacy initiative for boys (www.guysread.com) drove him to create Trucktown, a crazy, fun action series for the youngest readers.

The Time Warp Trio meets Marco Polo!

What would happen if someone had a time-warping book he got from his uncle who was a magician, and he took it to the local YMCA pool while he played Marco? Polo! with his best friends? In the sixteenth adventure of the Time Warp Trio, it happens to Joe (and Fred and Sam). And what happens is sandstorms, desert bandits, a smelly camel, strange horoscopes, the emperor of all China, and one very famous explorer. If the explorer is Marco Polo, this must be thirteenthcentury China!

Children's Literature

This sixteenth installment of the popular series is just as irreverently funny and enticing to reluctant readers as its many predecessors. Joe, Fred, and Sam are playing Marco Polo in the Brooklyn YMCA pool ("Very interesting that the name of a famous explorer would become a game played in swimming pools," observes Sam), when Joe's thin blue magical Book transports them back to the time of, yes, of course, the original Marco Polo himself. Marco Polo, as it turns out, enjoys replying "Polo!" every time anyone calls out "Marco?" and soon Joe and Marco are off on a camel ride into a desert sandstorm, while Fred and Sam are kidnapped by bandits. The boys' ability to predict the future gains them respect as learned astrologers, until they meet up with the fabled Kublai Kahn and his Royal Astrologer, Ding Dong, who is not at all pleased to have his exclusive expertise undermined. While it's fun to come across the blank two-page spread representing the sandstorm ("If you had to read a whole chapter for an assignment, you could just read that little bit at the beginning, look at the empty sandstorm pages, and then you would be done with a chapter"), even the laziest readers will hurry on to see what happens next to the immortal trio in their uproarious, wisecracking adventures—and actually learn something about 13th-century China in the process.