It’s Spring! It’s Spring! Margaret is happy because that means Spring Cleaning. Clementine is happy because that means field trip.
But Clementine’s field trip may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Clementine thought she’d be ok even though the 4th graders have RULES about silent eating. Margaret is in 4th grade and they’ll be partners-- Margaret knows all about silent eating and Clementine can do all the dirty stuff.
But then Olive comes. Olive doesn’t mind having a food name. Olive has her own language, but Clementine can’t figure it out, unlike the other kids. Olive doesn’t understand about silent eating and then Clementine’s required to be her partner! What will she do now?
Oh Clementine, still such a great series! I love Margaret and her excitement over spring cleaning and her horror at dirt floors (how do you sweep a dirt floor to keep it clean? It’s dirt!)
I also really like that Clementine’s mom is still pregnant and she and her dad are still working on the table--it really shows the long-range time of these projects.
I also really liked her reaction to Olive-- Clementine’s really taken aback that Olive doesn’t mind having a food name the same way she does. And when Olive’s secret language takes off and Clementine can’t manage it-- hoo boy. Clementine gets jealous. It’s a really well-done plot line.
All in all, I still love this series and can’t wait for the next installments!
Book Provided by... my local library
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And if you are a fan, that’s all you need to know.
But, I’d feel silly having that for a review, so here’s some more info:
The family meeting sign has been posted, so Clementine has to go all day wondering what she did wrong this time. Only, she hasn’t done anything wrong-- they’re going to have another baby. She’s not sure about this-- her family is perfect the way it is, why go mess it up? Add in a missing lab rat and favorite hat and the fact that Margaret’s discovered make-up (oiy vey) and things aren’t going well for her at all.
My favorite part about this one is that little Daikon Radish (do we ever actually learn his name?) is starting to be less of a baby and more of a person that Clementine’s relating to differently-- he’s his own character and starting to play a bigger role. I also really liked Clementine’s interactions with her dad-- very heartwarming and hilarious.
And, as always, her solutions to the big and small problems are off-the-wall and perfect all at once.
As I said though, all you really need to know is Clementine’s back! Hooray!
Book Provided by... my local library
Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.
It's Clementine's turn to be Friend of the Week. Not only is she in charge of the milk money, being line leader, and feeding the fish, but at the end of the week, all of her classmates will write a booklet about her.
Clementine wants to make sure that her classmates have good things to say about her in her booklet, so tries to find nice things she can do for them-- free tattoos at lunch, promising they can use all of her dad's crazy holiday decorations for their bikes at the big bike rally...
But then she and Margaret get into a HUGE FIGHT.
And, even worse, Moisturizer goes missing. Clementine completely forgets about Friend of the Week as she tries to find her kitten, only to remember after she thinks she let everyone down.
Clementine's voice and way of looking at the world continue to positively delight me. And her illustration work in this series continues to be my favorite Marla Frazee work. (I like her best in black and white.)
Clementine always makes me smile and even though she cried a lot in this book (as would you, if youre kitten went misisng!) she still made me laugh.
Another great addition to a super-strong, super-awesome series.
Book Provided by... my local library
Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.
So, May is Asian-American Heritage Month. To celebrate, 10 children's and YA authors got together to spotlight "Ten new contemporary novels by Asian Americans aren’t traditional tales set in Asia nor stories about coming to America for the first time."
I thought this was an awesome idea, so to join the party, I'm reading all the fusion stories this month, substituting earlier works if the highlighted story isn't published yet.
But, first I'm going to ramble on about myself for a while, because it's my blog! I can do what I want!
Mainly, the wedding I went to this weekend was wonderfully fun AND I got to meet some other kidlit dorks, including someone who knows David Levithan. And Rachel Cohn! My geeky heart just about died! My response was "Can I touch you?!" Initially, he thought I was being a bitch, when really, I was in total AWE!
And now I'm off to North Carolina for my sister's wedding!
Also, I want to give a shout-out to Lauren. She's my new-ish coworker and she is awesome. I don't think I've mentioned that yet. But who else would randomly burst into song with you on the reference desk? Especially when said song is a medley of the Simpson's musical version of Street Car Named Desire?
You can always depend on the kindness of strangers! To buck up your spirits and shield you from dangers! Now here's a tip from Blanche you won't regret: A stranger's just a friend you haven't met. You haven't met! STREETCAR!
That's what too much story time can do to a person!
Also, here's a video I've been watching a lot of lately:
Because do you know what's better than a Kate Pierson muppet? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Also, how awesome is it when you look like a total moody rock star while rocking out on a banjo?!
I haven't read an American Girl book in years. Like, not since I was the targeted reading age and read all of the Kirsten, Samantha, and Molly books. Yes, only those three, because BACK IN MY DAY there only were three. Initially, there were only 3 books for 3 dolls! Yes, I was a recipient of the original Pleasant Company catalog.
Anyway, Yee's book took me right back there. And it was weird at the same time, because after reading Yee's other work (by which I mean the hysterical Millicent Min, Girl Genius) this has a very different voice. This... reads like an American Girl book, which it should. I think writing like that, in someone else's corporate voice must be very hard, but Yee's awesome at it. (Ok, I've drafted my share of press releases in hoity toity British English in the proper corporate voice. I know it's hard.)
Anyway, the book. Ivy Ling is not feeling lucky. Her best friend, Julie (who is actually the American Girl) has moved across town. Her parents are really busy and can't help Ivy with her Chinese school project. Plus, they've been eating take-away Chinese food from her grandparent's Chinese resteraunt. And Ivy's grandparents heard her complaining.
But that's not the worst of it. The big inter-city gymnastics tournament is coming up. Ivy needs to compete in the all events, but she fell off the balance beam last time and is having a hard time getting her routine right again. As if that weren't bad enough, the big Ling family reunion is coming up. On the same day as the gymnastics meet.
Ivy can't go to both, and her parents are making her decide, only they have different ideas about which one is more important.
Whatever will Ivy do?!
I loved the "American Girl" ness of it. Also, in the background material, there are some awesome pictures of Lisa Yee in the 70s.
I had forgotten how many appearance details American Girl books put in. As a kid I really liked that, but it's a little jarring to me as an adult.
This is not really a fusion story. Minn and Jake's Almost Terrible Summer is a Fusion Story, but it doesn't come out until August, so I have to wait for it. So, I read the one that came before it instead. But, as far as the reader knows, this one doesn't have any Asian-Americans in it, because the fact that Jake is 1/4 Korean comes out in the next book and causes some tension when Minn wonders why Jake didn't tell her. At least, that's what the various blurbs I've read tell me.
Anyway, in this book (a prose novel)
Minn is feeling very empty, and very tall, and very odd, and very pigtailed, and very lizardy, and very much alone.
Because her best friend laughed at her with another girl. She ends up being paired with the new kid,Jake, who's afraid of lizards. Catching lizards is the only thing kids do in Santa Brunella. So, Minn is going to teach Jake how to catch lizards. But there are accidents and mean kids and other grade-school stuff to endure.
Very well told. Minn and Jake, as well as the rest of the kids, are authentic, and their trials and tribulations are small, as they are for most kids, but aren't trivialized, which is refreshing.
And now for some non-Fusion Stories, because who knows when I'll get to blog again?
This is a retelling of Thumbelina, in the sense of straight-up retelling it with a few variations, not recasting it, a la Shannon Hale or Gail Carson Levine.
Except the ending is different. But the narrator warns us. I'm quoting from an ARC here, so it might not be 100% accurate (but I hope it is, because it's the very matter-of-fact voice that the narrator and Thumbelina use throughout)
Now you know exactly what happened and can write a book report, if you need to do that, or count this as part of your summer reading list. Nobody will mind or think any less of you if you just close the book and DO NOT READ ANOTHER WORD.
But, to tell you the truth, there is something more. If you felt there was something forced about that ending, you were right."
And that's why I loved the book. That, and the wonderful illustrations that were made by cutting out black construction paper. A nice retelling of a fairy tale that gives Thumbelina back her spunk without detracting from Anderson's original.
Just when Clementine and her 3rd grade teacher have figured each other out, Mr. D'Matz is going to go off and go to Egypt IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCHOOL YEAR! And the new teacher has new rules that Clementine can't guess.
If you liked the others, you'll like this. I'm seriously starting to worry about Margaret though. That girl's going to need therapy sooner rather than later. I do like how well Clementine handles her, though.
In the paint section, hundreds of little paint tubes, all neat and new, sat on the shelf. Margaret threw her hands up and backed away, as if the tubes of paint were just waiting to burst all over her clean clothes. Margaret doesn't even liket o look at things that might get her dirty.
"Quick, run over to the paper aisle!" I told her. "Just keep staring at all those nice clean stacks of paper!"
I also like how the trip to the Chinese grocery store yields a whole new host of vegetable names for her brother. Bamboo shoot, scallion, daikon radish...
Well, I didn't win the challenge. Sigh. Now I know what the standard of competition is-- y'all better watch out next year, is all I'm saying.
I liked the challenge of it though, so I'm having a self-challenge. Feel free to play along. The challenge is this:
Read all the books I have checked out and borrowed. Don't check out or borrow anymore books until the end of the challenge. Read a as-of-yet determined amount of books that I OWN. I currently have 19 books checked out and probably about 8 that are borrowed.
I buy books that I think I'll want to own. I can't help it. But, they often get waylaid because dude, the library books have to go back. So the books I wanted so much that I bought them languish on the shelves, unread. Time to change that.
Clementine always pays attention, despite what her teacher says. She's just paying attention to what's going on outside the window.
Here we have heroine who is all heart, but doesn't always know how to show it. When perfect Margaret tries to cut glue out of her hair, all Clementine was trying to do was even it up. But then she's not allowed to play with Margaret anymore. Clementine knows Margaret's sad about having no more hair, so Clementine cuts all of her hair off, just to make her feel better. Why doesn't anyone understand this?
Marla Frazee's pen and ink illustrations make this story great, as does Clementine's pitch-perfect voice:
And then Margaret went all historical, and the art teacher went all historical, and nobody could think of anything to do except the regular thing, which is: send me to the principal's office.
Clementine is spunkier than Ramona and not as annoying as Junie B. Her voice is captured perfectly. It's hard not to fall in love with Clementine, which is why I squealed for joy when this came in:
I think this one might be even more hilarious than the first one. The school is having a talent show, but there's just one problem-- Clementine doesn't have a talent.
I like this one partly because a lot of the adults that were flat characters in the first book (because, let's face it, in a kid's eye, most adults are flat characters) round out a bit more, especially the principal.
I really just want to cut and paste a bunch of quotations, or possibly the entire book, but you just read it yourself. I will leave you with this:
But he ignored me, which is called Getting on with the Day when a teacher does it, and Being Inconsiderate when a kid does it.
I'm not entirely sure who is narrating this tale, but the breathless excitement that comes across in punctuation-less run-on sentences leads me to believe it is one of Moxy Maxwell's fellow 9-year-olds.
But that is not part of this story and will sidetrack us and we must move on if we're ever going to get to the darkness now descending on Moxy's horizon.
See, Moxy has a bit of a problem. She has been carrying around her copy of Stuart Little all summer so she can read it during her in-between times, but, see, she didn't have many of those this summer. So, here it is, the last day of summer vacation, and she hasn't read it yet. This is a problem because there will be a test on it tomorrow, the first day of school.
So Moxy is going to go straight up to her room and read the whole thing before the daisy routine water ballet tonight. But, of course, she should probably clean her room first. And then she needs some food, for energy. And then, because the day has been such an emotional roller coaster, she should probably lie down. And then, she has a fabulous, stupendous, near-genius idea that must be set into motion immediately.
Of course, when the best idea Moxy has had in her life leads to an drowned, exploding dahlia garden, can she find a way out? And will she ever read Stuart Little?
This is a funny look at a kid trying to get out of doing her summer reading assignment. Perhaps not quite as funny as Clementine, but still funny and will appeal to the same people. Another thing I want to draw attention to is that Moxy's twin brother, Mark has been studying photography over the summer and his photographic illustrations (really those of Valerie Fisher) add a lot to the tale.
Clementine and the Spring Trip Sara Pennypacker
