Stunk Chapter Summaries

This book stunk and not in a good way, and I rate this book 1 out of 4 stars. The book consisted of a list of things that were stinky in the boy’s room; there was no plot or real change in the main character or progression of a plot. There was no educational value in the plot, and for exploring rhyme, there are far better choices that are more likely to maintain a child’s attention.

The book starts out by naming things that stink and how they came to be in that area, like in the book or in the boy’s room. There is no plot or character development to drive the book forward. There’s no reason for most of the items even listed to still be here causing a foul stench, so there is a question about the logic of the book even in the list of items. Towards the end of the book, the boy decides to wash his smelly items, but there’s no reason for him to have decided to do this. No parent asked him to clean up, and he didn’t seem to see a problem with them being smelly. So why did he decide to clean up? It’s unclear.

While this makes for an amusing joke at the end of the book, it isn’t enough to save the book. It may be enough to get a giggle out of a child, but it’s likely that the rest of the book would still be unremarkable enough for children to forget this book after one reading. The middle portion of the book just seems like filler, a rhyming list that goes nowhere as item after smelly item are listed for the reader to consider without good reason for many of the items being