Stuart Gibbs. Poached. Simon & Schuster, 2014.

“I never would have been accused of stealing the koala if Vance Jessup hadn’t made me drop a human arm in the shark tank.”

That is the opening sentence of Poached. If that does not get the reader’s attention, nothing will. Yes, Poached is for younger or YA (young adult) readers and is very much in the vein of Gordon Korman. It is funny, exciting, mostly realistic, and exotic. Good stuff.

Teddy Fitzroy’s parents both work for FunJungle, a large zoo and theme park in central Texas. Teddy knows his way around there as well. He has two problems: (1) He enjoys a good prank and (2) Vance Jessup, the junior high bully, fifteen but in the eighth grade.

Besides the bully Jessup, he has developed another antagonist. Just as Sergeant Inspector Blair hates Hamish Macbeth even though Macbeth has helped Blair solve numerous crimes, so FunJungle’s head of security Marjorie O’Malley, a.k.a. Large Marge, bears an animus towards twelve-year-old Teddy in spite of his help in solving the mystery surrounding the death of one of the zoo’s hippos.

So the prank that Teddy pulls off at Vance’s instigation leads to him being a prime suspect when Kazoo the Koala is stolen from the zoo.

This is serious. Koalas are rarely rented to zoos outside of Australia. They are never sold and not allowed to stay out of Australia for very long. Kazoo, for example, was rented for six months for almost a million dollars a month. This theft, then, could create a great financial loss for the zoo and put it in the middle of an international incident.

Not only that, Koalas only eat certain types of eucalyptus leaves which are not found outside of Australia. Without a proper diet, the cute marsupial would die in four or five days.

When Teddy’s figure is seen on a security video inside the Koala’s display after hours, he is in a world of trouble.

Poached tells of the adventures that Teddy has trying to solve the mystery while being a prime suspect. Other people involved include Kristi, the cute docent who tells visitors all about Kazoo; Bubba Stackhouse, a policeman who works with Marge; Xavier, Teddy’s best friend; Tracy Boyd, director of operations at FunJungle; J. J. McCracken, billionaire owner of FunJungle; Summer, J. J.’s daughter and friend of Teddy who attends a boarding school two thirds of the way across the country; various bullies, jocks, and cheerleaders of Lyndon Johnson Middle School; the ex-con who dresses in a lizard or koala suit at the zoo; a mysterious man in an orange hat who seems to show up whenever disasters are happening; a very temperamental chimpanzee that workers at the zoo have nicknamed Furious George; among others.

Teddy gets arrested more than once. Not only does he have to deal with the school bullies (Vance has his buddies including twins known collectively as TimJim), but Teddy has to convince the authorities he is innocent. It is clear that Teddy has no idea where the koala bear is, but who else could have lifted it? And why?

There are chases, an explosion in the shark tank, disguises, and multiple other complications. Even though this is a mystery with serious consequences, there is also lots of humor, as even the opening line tells us. This book is YA fun. Just as we did with Korman, I suspect we will from time to time read some other FunJungle books. I suspect other readers will feel the same way after reading one.