Clementine and the Family Meeting

Clementine is back, and #5 in the series is as fresh as the first. What keeps this series strong is the main character's appealing and oh-so-believeable voice. Unquenchable as ever, the third-grader with the fruit name has a lot to deal with in Clementine and the Family Meeting, starting with the dreaded meeting. As she puts it: "Because even though my parents say they are about things we have to talk over as a family, I have noticed that they are usually about something I am doing wrong." 


Not this time. The family meeting brings unexpected news to Clementine and her little brother--they are going to have another sibling. Clementine is less than pleased, and, like many young children, would rather things stay the same. But change is everywhere. Her best friend Margaret has become obsessed with becoming a make-up artist and talks nonstop about moving to California to live with her father. At school, Eighteen, a rat from science class, has disappeared and Clementine worries for his safety. Eighteen was also her science project, and now that he's missing, her partner is trying to convince her to use one of his many superpowers as a substitute project. Rounding things off, her favorite hat, knitted for her by her grandmother, is missing and her dad refuses to let her try on his new tool belt.

Like the very best Seinfeld episodes, all the different plot strands come together in the end, prompting Clementine to call her own family meeting. Clementine's transformation from disgruntled sister to enthusiastic one is convincingly shown, and will leave readers eagerly waiting the next book. Hopefully Mushroom Soup (Clementine's unofficial name for her newest sibling) will be making an appearance.

Clementine and the Family Meeting
by Sara Pennypacker
illustrations by Marla Frazee
Hyperion, 160 pages
Published: September 13, 2011

This title was reviewed from NetGalley.

Clementine, Friend of the Week

Don't you wish you had Clementine as a friend? Here are just some of the small acts of kindness she does in this fourth installment in the series:

1. She thoughtfully fixes Margaret's Friend of the Week booklet, peeling off the tape that Margaret's brother had placed over the "r" in "friend." Her reward? Margaret thinks Clementine was snooping, not helping. Now Margaret is mad at her.

2. She compliments her fellow classmates repeatedly. Collecting the lunch money, she tells Waylon his quarters are especially shiny, Maria that she counts out change quickly, and Rasheed that his nickels and dimes are neatly stacked (that's because he uses spit).

3. She offers free tattoos to her classmates, decorating their arms with anchors, tulips, and a goat eating berries behind a bush. This good deed lands her a trip to the principal's office.

4. She names her friend Maria's new iguana Flomax (a medication that treats the symptoms of an enlarged prostate). This eventually leads to the once TV-deprived Maria being allowed to watch the tube, and earns Clementine Maria's gratitude.

5. She offers to provide free decorations for all her classmate's bikes in time for Saturday's bike rally fund raiser.

Clementine's motivation for most of these good deeds is not entirely selfless. She wants her friends to write good things about her in her upcoming Friend of the Week booklet. Her plans are going along just fine when tragedy strikes. Moisturizer, her pet kitten, goes missing. Clementine is heartbroken. On Friday, the day she was to receive her booklet, Clementine doesn't go to school. Instead she spends the day putting up posters of her missing cat and combing the streets of her neighborhood looking for him. Saturday, the day of the bike rally, the hunt continues, and Clementine forgets her promise to provide decorations for all the bikes.

But as the song goes, "you gotta have friends," and Clementine does. Margaret joins forces with Clementine's third grade class, which leads to Moisturizer's safe return.

Sara Pennypacker has done it again. Laugh-aloud funny, Clementine, Friend of the Week is also thoughtful and moving. Similar books often minimize how truly heart wrenching it is to lose a pet. This book shows how catastrophic such a loss can be to a young child. Marla Frazee's pen and ink illustrations are priceless, especially the ones that focus on the characters' expressions. I'm thinking especially of Margaret's when she visits Clementine after their fight. Arms folded across her chest, she barely looks at Clementine through her narrowed eyes.

Highly recommended.

Clementine, Friend of the Week
by Sara Pennypacker
illustrations by Marla Frazee
Disney-Hyperion, 176 pages
Published: July 2010