Ripley's Bureau of Investigation 7: Shock Horror (7) (RBI) Paperback – November 9, 2010

If you are a fan of Ripley's Believe or Not books, you will like these fiction stories. There are Ripley's facts at the end of the book. This book is a lot of fun to read.

I read this book aloud for my tween boys. We enjoyed it enough to want to read another book in the series, but we weren't totally enthused.First the plus sides. The book has an illustration or an rPhone (Ripley-phone) text message on almost every two page spread. Thus the amount text isn't intimidating for a struggling reader -- or for short read-aloud sessions. The book also has cool and adventurous main characters of both genders, so it should appeal to both boys and girls.Now the downsides. My eldest son thought it was unrealistic. Now, we've read lots of books that were a lot less realistic than this one, but in the context of science and strange-but-true facts he thought the plot was a little hard to swallow. And the opposite is true, too. In the context of a fictional book, the strange facts were hard to interpret -- can they possibly be true? But I googled a couple facts and they were reported in mainstream newspapers.All in all, an okay introduction to the series but we're hoping for an even better RBI book to read next.

Very interesting facts

The RBI agents go to a village where recently there have been unexplained fires and blackouts. Another great story for all to enjoy.