80 Juve nil e F i c ti o n
Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made by Stephan Pastis
JF PASTIS, S.
I’ve never read “Pearls Before Swine,” Stephan Pastis’ comic strip. I saw an advertisement for this juvenile fiction book and was captivated by the character on the cover. Timmy Failure, with his slightly askew scarf, inspired me to spend some time in his world. Timmy shares his world with his mom, his polar bear Total, his classmates Rollo Tookus, Molly Moskins and Corrina Corrina, and the local librarian Flo (which does *not* stand for Florence). Most of Timmy’s time is devoted to his detective agency, Total Failure, Inc., with teleconference calls, investigations on his mom’s Segway, cases (mostly unsolved, or solved by someone else) and schemes to get more business. Timmy suffers a few setbacks, such as temporarily losing the Failuremobile, watching his profits being eaten by a chicken-nugget loving polar bear and being the love object of a girl who smells like tangerines. But you have to root for a guy who wears a hat that says “biscuits.” – Lisa L. Dendy