The Hooples' Horrible Holiday

by Stephen Manes, Wally Neibart (Illustrator)

Thanksgiving! Turkey! Pumpkin pie! Parades! Alvin Hoople and his family are off to his grandparents' house to celebrate. But everything from freeway traffic to airplane food makes it look like the day will never arrive. Even the Pilgrims on the perfect Thanksgiving cake barely survive the trip.

But that's nothing compared to the chaos at grandmother's house when a giant blizzard knocks out the power for miles around. With aunts and uncles and cousins and parents gathered for the big day, suddenly there's no TV, no heat, no lights, no stove . . . no turkey!

But if the Pilgrims could get along without electricity, so can the Hooples. With a houseful of clever people and some wild imagination, they come up with the wildest newfangled old-fashioned Thanksgiving ever!

Genres: Thanksgiving

121 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1986

About the author

Stephen Manes (born 1949) wrote the "Digital Tools" column that appeared in every issue of Forbes until recently when he took a break. He is expected to return in the future. He is also co-host and co-executive editor of the public television series "PC World's Digital Duo," a program he helped create.

Manes was previously the Personal Computers columnist for the Science Times section of The New York Times and a regular columnist for InformationWeek. He has been on the technology beat since 1982 as a columnist and contributing editor for PC Magazine, PC/Computing, PC Sources, PCjr, and Netguide. The now defunct Marketing Computers named him one of the four most influential writers about the computer industry and called him "a strong critical voice."

From April 1995 to December 2008, he also wrote the "Full Disclosure" column, anchoring the back page of PC World.

Manes is coauthor of the best-selling and definitive biography Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry--and Made Himself the Richest Man in America. He also wrote The Complete MCI Mail Handbook and programmed much of the Starfixer and UnderGround WordStar software packages.

Manes is also the author of more than 30 books for children and young adults, including the Publishers Weekly bestseller Make Four Million Dollars by Next Thursday! and the award-winning Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days!, which was adapted for the public television series Wonderworks. His books include the cult favorites Chicken Trek and The Obnoxious Jerks and have won a commendation from the National Science Foundation, International Reading Association Children's Choice awards, and kid-voted awards in five states. His writing credits also include television programs produced by ABC Television and KCET/Los Angeles and the 70s classic 20th Century-Fox movie Mother, Jugs & Speed.

Manes is currently serving his fourth term as an elected member of the National Council of the Authors Guild, the country's oldest organization of book authors. Born and raised in the hills of Pittsburgh, he now lives in hillier Seattle.

Reviews

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm disappointed I went my entire childhood unaware there was a sequel to Hooples on the Highway about my favorite holiday.

Reading these out loud to my daughter, it occurred to me why I loved the first book so much as a kid: So much of the book is made up of the mundane details of family life (this one spends about half its length on the Hooples driving to the airport and taking a flight) in ways that make them feel viscerally real to kids. All my memories of Hooples on the Highway are like this: Beat-for-beat accounts of meals, gas station stops, overnights in a crappy hotel. It's like Stieg Larsson writing for elementary school, and I still dig it. (My daughter did too.) I wish there were more of these.

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

NOVEMBER

as part of my personal reading challenges for 2017, once a month i will be revisiting a favorite book from when i was a little bitty karen and seeing if it holds up to my fond memories and determining if i can still enjoy it as an old and crotchety karen.


fingers crossed.

[Jason Pitoniak · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I'm remembering correctly, my third grade teacher read this book and Hooples on the Highway to my class. This would have been literally just months after this book came out, almost 40 years ago. I loved them back then, so much so I got my own copies for Christmas and read them both several times. The grandfather's statement about the lucky quarter, "as long as you have this, you'll never be broke," has always stuck with me, even to this day.

I got thinking about the book again this year, as the rush of the holiday season was starting up. While I was stringing up my Christmas lights and getting them connected to my home automation system, it occurred to me that Stephen Manes had predicted the modern smart home way back in 1986. The grandparents, winning some kind of contest, had their home completely automated so that everything could be controlled by a remote control. While my system is modest compared to some, I can control some of my lights, my TVs, and my furnace, not with a remote with a keyboard and a "little window" that displays typed commands, but with with my smart phone.

The Hooples seem to have the worst luck in everything they do, but Manes has a way of taking the mundane and exaggerating it to the point that it becomes comical. He takes what, for a kid, are the boring parts of life, like traveling to a destination or getting stuck in a storm without power, and makes them fun and teaching us that, no matter how bad things get, at least they won't be as bad as what the Hooples had to deal with.

[Shaili Saini · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it as a child and am reading it now with my daughter… it somehow became even better!

[Kayla Siebert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic from elementary school for me. Love it.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

The kids really enjoyed this book even though it was very simple. Ashlynn commented that it really wasn't that horrible of a holiday. Either the conflicts were too simple for them or they have learned a good lesson about not complaining!

[Haider Abbas · Rating 3 out of 5]

great fun love this book...