Everyone Loves the Bad Guys

The Bad Guys Series by Aaron Blabey

I work at a library and was seeing these books everywhere.  They seemed to be very popular, and they looked like fun, so I decided to see what they were all about.  I have now read the first six in the series and have ordered the next four from my local library.  I plan to read all 16 of them.  The concept is that a wolf is tired of being the bad guy, so he gets some other animals with bad reputations to join his team and become good guys.  You have the founder of the team (team name is still be determined), the overly optimistic wolf, the shark who is a master of disguise, the snake who has trouble remembering he is one of the good guys now, and the piranha who is always angry because everyone thinks he is a sardine.  Six books in and they have already saved dogs from the pound, chickens from the chicken farm, run into zombie kittens, an evil mad scientist hamster, aliens and gone on a trip to the moon.  So far all of the books have been fun, exciting and silly in all the best ways.  They are written for children, so you will get fart jokes and the like.  They do get goofy, but I love it.  The drawings are wonderful.  The snake has some of the best expressions.  I like that they make the fact that the shark and piranha are walking around out of water and that all the animals are wearing clothes a joke in the books.  Blabey makes a point of mentioning both but never explaining so the reader feels like that are part of an inside joke.  Children will love going on adventures with these unlikely heroes as they learn to work together and find out that helping others is a wonderful feeling.