Marvin Mallard and the Magic Medallion

Marvin Mallard is a flying-impaired duck who has managed to survive to adolescence because he's very good at hiding in his surroundings. (At Duckmont High, he was the top student in Advanced Camouflage.)
Marvin has a good heart, but he uses bad judgment and often gets into trouble. His antics make him a regular at a detention center called the Quackery, where Principal Ruffledfeathers has tried in vain to reform the juvenile ducklinquent.
After getting into trouble again and violating the terms of his probation, Marvin is sentenced to three months of hard labor in the prison-state of Jugaloo—and then the action, fast and furious, begins.
With the help of the gopher Digger von Under and his fellow Frustrators who run the Secret Underground Railroad, Marvin makes a dramatic escape and winds up in Willavanna. There he learns the whereabouts of what had become his Holy Grail: a medallion that makes your mind very clear and helps you get wised up—if you have a pure heart.
Marvin wants to get wised up so he can stay out of trouble. When he finally gets the medallion, the first thing that becomes clear to him is that staying out of trouble is simply not doing anything bad. That, he realizes, is very different from actually doing something good. From this point on, Marvin becomes a mallard on a mission: to get wised up so he can do some good.
Loaded with wordplay and off-beat humor that will quack up adults as well as kids, Marvin Mallard and the Magic Medallion stresses the importance of honesty, with its main moral being that we should rise above blaming others and take responsibility for our own actions.
This chapter book also stresses the advantages of working together, for, in the end, the flying-impaired Marvin makes himself a deal (instead of a meal) with a visually-impaired eagle—that he ride on her back and navigate her so they can both fly wherever they want to go.
Eighteen spectacular, full-color illustrations fuel the imagination and help bring this delightful tale to life.

Jim Riva was the class clown in his boyhood days. He became a serious student of philosophy at the undergraduate and graduate levels before coming to the philosophical conclusion that the best outlook on life is to take humor seriously.
An off-the-beaten-track world traveler who spent the better part of fourteen years in Japan, Jim has written ten books that fall into the Humor category and more than forty audio sketches based on his his character the Champion of Reason.