Travis & Freddy's Adventures in Vegas
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Travis has the million-dollar smile. Freddy has the million-dollar brain. Together the two buddies—one the coolest kid and the other the biggest brain at Walla Walla Junior High—set out to save Travis’s dad from disaster by winning big in Las Vegas, armed only with Travis’s charm and Freddy’s latest invention: a pair of glasses wirelessly connected to a laptop programmed with his homemade guaranteed-to-win-at-blackjack software.
Safely ensconced in the Elvis Suite in their hotel, room service flowing freely, everything looks good until they meet Johnny Large, the meanest— and shortest—gangster in Vegas. Once Johnny Large is on the scene, it’s going to take a lot of luck (and some help from Sam, their sassy new lady cabdriver friend) to get out of Vegas alive! Buckle up for a funny, scary thrill ride, as our heroes try to come of age with their heads still attached to their bodies.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As befits its setting, this humorously trumped-up, larger-than-life romp features a colorful array of wheeler-dealers including the two nearly-13-year-old protagonists. "Easy-on-the-eyes guy" Travis can "talk his way into, or out of, anything" even if he's hopeless in math class. Horse-faced, buck-toothed Freddy has no athletic prowess and no social skills, but this computer geek excels at math and helps Travis ace a math test for the first time. Each boy puts his special skills to use after they learn that Travis's gambling father is facing financial ruin. Beating the odds, they manage to board a plane and land a suite in Las Vegas, where they hope to win enough money to bail the man out. In a madcap series of events, the duo enlists the aid of Sam, a gutsy female cab driver whose father is in jail after being set up by Vegas's leading gangster. With Travis by his side, Freddy uses his "monster iBrain mega-laptop" to mastermind a big win for Sam at the blackjack table, but the gangster finds them out. The tone is frivolous enough that readers won't worry for the youngsters' safety even as the villain hangs them upside-down in their tighty-whitey underpants off a balcony high above the strip. Though their emergence as heroes on both the Vegas and home fronts comes as no surprise, there are enough silly yucks along the way to keep kids amused and betting on the duo. Ages 10-up.
