The Miniature World of Marvin & James

Marvin is a beetle with a talent for drawing. James, a young boy, is Marvin's BBF. The Miniature World of Marvin & James is the first in an early chapter-book series that tells about their adventures. Interestingly,  the characters come from a best-selling middle-grade novel Elise Broach wrote titled Masterpiece. In that story James and Marvin help recover a drawing stolen from an art museum. I haven't read Masterpiece yet (though I plan to), but Broach's new work most certainly holds its own.

The story starts with James packing for a weeklong vacation at the seaside. Marvin, alas, will not be going and is already missing James. Once James has left Marvin mopes around under the kitchen sink until his mother persuades him to play with his cousin Elaine. The two young beetles have an exciting adventure (and close shave) with an electric pencil sharpener during which Marvin overhears a phone conversation that suggests that Marvin has made a new friend. Marvin spends the remainder of the week worrying that James has replaced him with another BBF.

As in so many books for beginning readers, this book tackles the challenges of friendship. In simple yet poignant sentences Broach parses its complexities while managing to tell a rip-roaring story at the same time. Readers will be transfixed by Marvin's adventures and satisfied with its heartfelt conclusion. Murphy's pen-and-ink illustrations are a delight, capturing an array of insect emotion. A first-rate chapter book all around!

The Miniature World of Marvin & James
by Elise Broach
illustrated by Kelly Murphy
Henry Holt, 104 pages
Published: 2014

The Great Cake Mystery

People who know me well know I love mysteries. I started at age 10 with the Nancy Drew series and never looked back. Today children can get hooked on detective stories at an even earlier age. Precious Ramotswe, a private eye living in Botswana, stars in a number of adult mysteries written by the prolific Alexander McCall Smith. Now young readers have the chance to meet Precious as Smith recounts how she solved her first case while still a schoolgirl. Smith has an easy, conversational style. He begins, "Have you ever said to yourself, Wouldn't it be nice to be a detective?" Readers feel themselves in the hands of a natural storyteller and immediately relax.

The mystery Precious solves is appropriately scaled for young readers. A thief is stealing delicious baked goods from students in school. When a boy is accused on circumstantial evidence, Precious comes to his rescue. And when the true suspect is revealed, like in every good mystery, readers will experience both surprise at not spotting the culprit sooner and a sense of inevitability.

Set in Botswana, the book immerses readers in a world much different from the world they know. Smith begins the book with Precious's father relating a tale of how he saved his village from a hungry lion by keeping his wits about him. Readers will relate, though, to Precious and her classmates, who behave as children do the world over.

The book is illustrated in striking woodcuts. Ian McIntosh limits himself to a palette of red, black, and gray, yet manages to produce  bold artwork that give the story a timeless feel. Altogether, this book serves as a fine introduction to the mystery genre.

The Great Cake Mystery
by Alexander McCall Smith
illustrations by Iain McIntosh
Anchor Books, 80 pages
Published: April 2012

Marty McGuire Digs Worms!

Marty's back! You have to hand it to a third-grader who has no qualms about shredding her collection of princess paper dolls (unwanted gifts from a well-meaning but clueless grandmother) in order to recycle paper. In this second book of the series the students in Marty's school are on a mission to save the earth. A visiting environmentalist challenges the students to come up with projects to help the environment. When the glop of paper dolls fails to materialize into paper (and breaks the food processor to boot), Marty chooses a new project. With the help of Grandma Barb, her cool non-paper-doll-giving grandmother, Marty and her best friend Annie create a worm compost farm that will turn the leftovers from the school cafeteria into fertilizer.

Worms and third-graders make for an explosive mix, especially in the hands of Kate Messner. After the kids overfeed their slimy charges, the worms escape and Marty and Annie have to capture them. Patience isn't Marty's strong point, but over the course of the story she learns to wait for her worms to slowly process trash into compost. On the big day, the environmentalist returns to judge the projects. Will Marty's worms win or won't they? Messner cleverly keeps readers at the edge of their seats as the winners are announced and brought on stage.

Marty is an engaging character, one whom kids will be sure to root for. And the environmentalist message, while prevalent, is rarely heavy handed. The students at Orchard Street Elementary genuinely care about saving the environment. One girl, whose father sometimes throws soda cans in the regular trash and not the recycling bin, sets up a metal detector that will buzz if aluminum goes in. As she explains, "I really wanted to set it up so he'd get zapped with a shock, too, like those electric dog fences, but my mom said I couldn't." The story is heavily sprinkled with such humorous tidbits, making it an enjoyable read. Brian Floca's light-hearted illustrations add to the fun.

Marty McGuire Digs Worms!
by Kate Messner
illustrations by Brian Floca
Scholastic Press, 176 pages
Published: April 2012

A Double Serving of Anna Hibiscus

"Anna Hibiscus lives in Africa. Amazing Africa." Storyteller guru Atinuke begins all her Anna Hibiscus early chapter books with these simple, yet powerful words, propelling readers into a world far different from their own. In book three of the series, Good Luck Anna Hibiscus!, Anna is on pins and needles as she prepares for her upcoming trip to Canada to visit her maternal grandmother for the Christmas holidays.

But first she has to get through the harmattan season, a time when the desert wind blows sand over Anna's home and beloved garden, blotting out the sun and making everything dull and brown. Rather than just describe an interesting weather phenomenon, Atinuke takes the opportunity to teach her readers about empathy. To Anna and her extended middle-class family, the harmattan is an inconvenience. Their garden wilts and they must conserve water from their well to restore it to its lush glory. For their poor neighbors who live outside the compound, there is little or no water at all and the people are suffering. Anna and her family sacrifice their garden to share their water with them. Now that's a trickle down theory I can get behind!

In the remaining stories, Anna's twin baby brothers, Double and Trouble, cause her to be blamed for a misdeed she didn't commit. The sharp injustice she feels is one young children will sympathize with. She also takes a trip to the city to shop for winter clothes for her trip to Canada, and, in the last story, finds that no one in her family has time for anymore; they are all too busy. What they are up to and how Anna responds will leave readers with a smile.

Cold feet. That's what Anna Hibiscus has, literally and figuratively,  in Have Fun Anna Hibiscus! Excited to travel by plane to stay with Granny Canada and see snow for the first time, Anna bumps up against cold reality: to go she has to leave. It isn't until the car pulls away to the airport that her worries start, among them Grandfather's admonition to steer clear of dogs. Grandfather tells her that people in cold countries allow dogs into their homes. Anna is sure he is mistaken. In her world, dogs "have worms and germs, and they like to bite people." Naturally she is astonished to find that Granny Canada keeps such a beast. And frightened. How friendly Qimmiq turns Anna's ideas about dogs around is both touching and believable. 

Snow, dogs, woolen tights. Another big discover Anna makes on her trip is prejudice. Up till now Anna has been cocooned in her large family. With all her cousins around, she hasn't ever had the need of friends. When a group of neighborhood children stop by to check out the new girl, Anna happily goes off with them to ice skate on the pond. She flops at ice skating, but when she excels at sledding, one small boy shouts, "Africans can't do that!"  Anna's heartfelt response is worth the price of admission. 

Atinuke packs a lot of life lessons into such a short book. Yet it's never didactic and the morals go down as smoothly as the steaming hot chocolate Anna sips throughout her stay. Lauren Tobia's cheerful ink illustrations help bring Anna's experiences in the icy North to life, and she captures Qimmiq's doggy ways to perfection. Highly recommended!

Good Luck Anna Hibiscus! and Have Fun Anna Hibiscus!

by Atinuke

illustrations by Lauren Tobia

Kane Miller, 110 pages

Published: 2011

This book was nominated for the 2011 Cybils Awards in the Easy Reader/Early Chapter Book category. I am a first-round panelist in this category, and this review reflects my opinion only.

Grin and Bear It (Cybils Nominee)

"What do you get when a bear walks through you vegetable garden?"
"What is a bear's favorite baseball team?"
"Why do hummingbirds hum?"

Bear has some really great jokes. And he wants to tell them and hear his friends laugh. So he books a gig at the Woodland Stage. He invites all his friends, and when they show up on the big day, Bear step on stage and.... Bombs. Big time. Stricken by stage fright, Bear stumbles off into the night. Luckily, there is a solution to Bear's woes and by the end of this heartfelt and funny early chapter book, Bear sees his dream come true, although not in the way he--or the reader--might have predicted.

Author/illustrator Leo Landry has created an engaging character in Bear, a comedian better suited to writing the jokes than performing them. The seven chapters are sprinkled with jokes, the kind that kids in the early primary grades love to tell and which adults groan after hearing. The colorful illustrations are simple and spare, yet with enough details to help beginning readers with the text.

Oh, and the answers to the jokes? "Squash." "The Cubs." "Because they don't know the words." Groan!

Grin and Bear It
by Leo Landry
Charlesbridge, 48 pages
Published: July 2011

This book was nominated by Franki Sibberson for the 2011 Cybils Awards in the Easy Reader/Early Chapter Book category. I am a first-round panelist in this category, and this review reflects my opinion only.

Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie

Great title! And an apt one, since it accurately describes the eight-year-old heroine's forlorn summer after her beloved babysitter moves away.

The story, told in free verse, starts with Eleanor hearing the terrible news that Bibi, her first and only babysitter, is moving to Florida to care for her aging father. How Eleanor copes with her grief at losing Bibi and how she comes to accept and like her new babysitter is the crux of this early chapter book.

Natalie, the new babysitter, has big shoes to fill. Bibi was just about perfect. Let Eleanor tell you herself:

"She is the best babysitter in the world.
She makes me soup when I am sick.
She holds my feet when I do handstands.
She knows which of my teeth are loose
and which ones I've lost.
She rubs my back when I am tired.
She takes a needle and thread
and sews up my pants
to make them fit right.
And she knows not to tickle me.
Because I hate to be tickled."  

Who wouldn't miss someone like this! As the summer progresses, Eleanor slowly comes to terms with her loss. It helps that she has understanding parents and that Natalie doesn't pressure her to accept her. First-time author Sternberg realistically portrays Eleanor's transformation so that by the story's end we can see that she's ready to start third grade and get on with her life. Bibi hasn't been forgotten, though.

"Bibi will always be my first babysitter.
My very special babysitter.
And she will always be my Bibi.
Even if she is waiting for the breeze in Florida,
and I am far away."

This special book is for anyone who has had to grapple with loss--and that means just about everyone.

Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie
by Julie Sternberg
Illustrations by Matthew Cordell
Amulet books, 128 pages
Published: March 2011

Amazing Monty

Welcome back, Monty! Montgomery Gerald Morris, otherwise know as Monty, returns in Amazing Monty, the third book in an early chapter book series by Johanna Hurwitz. A first grader who excels at reading, Monty encounters surprise after surprise in the book's six chapters.

His first surprise comes about as a direct result of his reading skills. A sign in the school office offers two parakeets and a cage for free. Monty endures a long day waiting for school to end. After finally  securing his parents' permission, he finds out he was late and the birds have been promised to someone else. So imagine his surprise the next day when the birds show up in his classroom! His teacher announces that everyone will get a chance to care for the new class pets, Yankee and Doodle.

But that's not all that's in store for Monty. He loses his first tooth, helps rescue one of the parakeets when it escapes its cage, has an asthma attack while going through a car wash, and welcomes a baby sister into the family. With each new challenge, Monty rises to the occasion in a heartwarming yet realistic way.

Amazing Monty is a gentle story about a sensitive, responsible boy finding his strengths and capabilities. Although published in 2010, it has a rather old-fashioned feel. Monty and his friend Joey walk home from school on their own. Their teacher reads My Father's Dragon (published in 1944) to the class. And, most amazing of all, Monty's parents wait until the birth to learn the sex of their baby. But if some of the details are a bit dated, the important bits still ring true. First graders will forever be excited when that first wiggly tooth pops out, when a new pet joins the classroom, and certainly when they proudly hold their brand new baby sister for the first time.

Johanna Hurwitz, with more than 60 books under her belt, hits another one out of the ballpark. My only reservation is that the audience for early chapter books may be put off reading about a lowly first grader. Kids usually prefer to read about older, not younger, protagonists. Anik McGrory's illustrations of button-nosed first graders are charming and full of life.

Amazing Monty
by Johanna Hurwitz
illustrations by Anik McGrory
Candlewick Press, 112 pages
Published: 2010

Anna Hibiscus

The African proverb "It takes a village to raise a child" is demonstrated again and again in Anna Hibiscus, an early chapter book by Atinuke. Set in Africa in an unnamed country (that sounds a lot like Nigeria), the book features its eponymous character, a young girl who lives with her extended family "in an old white house with balconies and secret staircases."

Anna can't image a life not surrounded by grandparents, aunties, uncles, and many, many cousins. So when, in the first story, Anna's father announces that only the immediate family will be going on a beach vacation, Anna is incredulous. And rightly so. For without the help of their relatives, the workload is overwhelming, and Anna's twin baby brothers, Double and Trouble, prove a handful. Father returns home to fetch the aunties to help with the work, then the cousins to amuse the twins, then the uncles to keep him company, and finally his parents for their wisdom and their ability to restore order to the squabbling household.    

With all its dozens of family members, the household would seem to be complete. But it's not. Auntie Comfort lives far away in America on the other side of the Atlantic. Anna can't wait until she is strong enough to swim right across the ocean to see her aunt. Luckily, she won't have to make such an arduous journey because the family learns that Auntie Comfort is coming to visit. Preparations begin at once, with everyone doing his or her part. Anna notices that Grandfather is worried that his youngest daughter might have forgotten "the proper African way" of doing things. With the help of an uncle, Anna sends messages to her aunt, reminding her of their customs. When Auntie Comfort arrives, dressed in traditional garb, Anna is reassured.

Anna learns an important lesson in the third story about work, money, and class. Bored with the quiet life in the family's comfortable compound, she yearns for the excitement of the city outside its walls. She's especially enamored of the girls who sell fruit and vegetables from baskets on their heads. Anna longs to be one of them, and begs her grandfather to allow her to do so. When he ignores her, she fills a basket with oranges and marches off. Because her oranges are freshly picked, they sell quickly. At the end of the day, Anna has a handful of coins in her pocket. The other girls do not fare as well, and Anna learns that they and their family will go hungry. She confesses to her grandfather, and the next morning he has Anna work for the girls. All day she walks back and forth to the market to fetch the girls the fruit that they sell. When evening falls, Anna's feet have blisters and she is sore through and through. But she knows "what it is to work hard."

The final story involves Anna's desire to "set her eyes, her feet, her hands, on snow." In her family, only her mother, who was born and raised in Canada, has experienced its frosty delight. Anna goes about the compound trying to recreate snow and failing. It's only when a letter comes from Granny Canada that Anna gets an inkling how to make her dream come true.

Anna Hibiscus is a finalist in the 2010 Cybils awards and deservedly so. Beginning readers are rarely given the opportunity of reading a book set in a world so different from their own. Luckily for them, Atinuke has a storyteller's natural voice. She brings Anna and her family to life through snatches of spot-on dialogue and by showing what it really means to be part of a large, loving family. Sometimes Anna's mother is cross with her and can't help her. When that happens, Anna knows to find a less-busy  aunt or uncle.  Lauren Tobia's black-and-white illustrations are a delight, showing homey details not always provided in the text. For instance, at the end of Anna's long day of work at the market, the illustration shows her back in the compound, her feet soaking in a bucket of water. A companion book, Hooray for Anna Hibiscus, is out, and two more books, Good Luck, Anna Hibiscus and Have Fun, Anna Hibiscus will be published in March. Put them all on your must-read list!

Anna Hibiscus
by Atinuke
illustrations by Lauren Tobia
Kane Miller, 112 pages
Published: 2010
  

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