Farmer Jake and Mr. Bunny are sucked into the computer, tokenized, put in a jar, and find themselves facing the Java Class Verifier (in the person of Telly the Bridge Troll). After passing inspection, they go on to meet Inky (a Squid-based implementation of the Java Virtual Machine). Along the way they meet many other characters that teach them about Primitives, Applets, Classes, Objects, Inheritance, the Garbage Collection, Interfaces, and even the Java Native Interface.

So much packed into one short book! Even the copyright notice is worth reading. This is an entertaining book, appropriate for readers with any level of Java experience, although greenhorns may not get all the jokes (yet). Most of the allegories and examples are reasonably accurate, technically. The explanation of threads and thread scheduling is particularly good.

If you can only buy one Java book this year, this probably shouldn't be it. But if you can scrape up some extra change from between the cushions of the couch, this would be a great way to spend it.
(Dave Landers - Ranch Hand, September 2002)

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