Belly Up: Volume 1

Stuart Gibbs

May 2010 · Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

When a beloved hippo dies at a Texas theme park, a twelve-year-old boy suspects foul play—and sets out to solve the mystery in this children’s series debut.

Twelve-year-old Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt Fitzroy believes that Henry, the hippopotamus at the brand-new FunJungle, has been murdered. The zoo’s top brass claim the hippo went belly up the natural way, but Teddy and his feisty friend Summer McCraken have other ideas.

Could the culprit be FunJungle’s animal-hating head of operations? Or is it FunJungle’s owner—Summer’s dad—a man who is much more concerned about money than animal welfare? The deeper Teddy and Summer dig, the more danger they’re in—because when it comes to hippo homicide, the truth can’t be caged!

Ratings and reviews

Twelve year old Teddy Fitzroy has grown up around animals all his life. His parents worked with animals in the Congo until the war got so bad they feared for their son's life. Now they work for the new internationally know zoo, FunJungle. Teddy is constantly having problems with security. It is no wonder he finds himself in trouble when the zoo's mascot, Henry the Hippo is found dead in his pool. He sneaks into the autopsy room and finds out that Henry was murdered. He doesn't know who to trust so he tries to tell the police. They think it is a prank call. Now he must find out who is behind all of this and why before they find him and try to eliminate him. I loved this book. I originally had checked it out from my local library but found it so good that I purchased a copy for my shelves at school. It has several good lessons about the problems facing animals in the jungle and the diamond/emerald trade.

I love it! The only thing that buggs me is all the errors! Im in 6th grade honors english and I'm only on chapter 12 and I have already spotted multiple wording errors that made a sentence so confusing that I couldn't even read it. Also, there are quite a few words that younger children may be offended or freaked out by. Including the "D word" Other than that, its amazing!

I had it in class and read half of it because I didn't get to finish! :'( it is a REALLY good book so far... read it. And another good one is Smells Like Dog and Boys, Girls, And Other Hazardous Material :DD loved them! :D ooooo and Keeper

About the author

Stuart Gibbs is the New York Times bestselling author of the Charlie Thorne series, FunJungle series, Moon Base Alpha series, Once Upon a Tim series, and Spy School series. He has written screenplays, worked on a whole bunch of animated films, developed TV shows, been a newspaper columnist, and researched capybaras (the world’s largest rodents). Stuart lives with his family in Los Angeles. You can learn more about what he’s up to at StuartGibbs.com.