Interspersed among the attractions along the highways and byways is a story line about the starring family's two kids - Coke and Pep (Can you say, "Product placement"?) - who are in mortal danger at the hands of several bungling evildoers every time they leave their parents to go off and look at something interesting, which turns out to be a facade for a devilish plot created by said evildoers.
It's really a lot like the original Batman TV series, come to think of it. Only not as clever.
I'll give Gutman credit for trying to educate children about US history and geography (and how to use Google) along the way. His fans contributed photographs of many of the real world places the family visits, and these are included in the book. This feels unusual because, for a book written in this style, you'd expect cartoon drawings.
On the whole, however, the one book (Never Say Genius - a subtitle that doesn't make much sense) I read from this series just didn't cut it for me. I suppose some children will be interested in these books, but maybe only if their teacher assigns them as reading material. I think there are better ways to teach this stuff (much of which is trivia not worth knowing) than the way these books try to do it.
