#grl3

With The Year of the Rat, we find Pacy Lin, narrator of Grace Lin's wonderful book The Year of the Dog at almost the same place we left her - a celebration of Chinese New Year with her family and friends. The Year of the Pig has ended and two years have passed since we first met Pacy. As the Year of the Rat, a time of new beginnings and change, kicks off Pacy finds herself wishing that nothing would change. She has found her best friend, Melody, and she has discovered her true talents.

As with The Year of the Dog, Lin seamlessly weaves traditional Chinese tales like "The Story of the Twelve Animals of the Chinese New Year or How the Rat Was First," and family stories about parents and grandparents growing up in Taiwan into her the story of Pacy and her family. As Pacy experiences typical American kid situations - she goes on field trips, worries about the talent show and copes with her loneliness and feelings of alienation after her best friend Melody moves to California, she also participates in family life which for her is rooted in her Chinese heritage and therefore not your typical American kid experience. Once Melody moves, Pacy struggles with being the only Asian girl at her school and also with the presence of Dun-Wei, the son of the family from China that has moved into Melody's house. Pacy doesn't like him at first and finds it difficult to welcome him into her life the way she did with Melody and her family, despite the fact that Pacy's mother has become fast friends with Dun-Wei's mother. When the other kids start calling him "Dumb-Way," Pacy doesn't join in but she also doesn't stop them, at first. The complexity of this situation is a step up from The Year of the Dog and is appropriate, considering Pacy is older in this book. Lin handles the insensitiveness and compulsion to ostracize anyone who is different that school age children are prone to and addresses them through the observations and ideas of Pacy in a very thoughtful, realistic manner.

In the author's note for The Year of the Dog, Grace Lin mentions that one of her favorite books as a child was Carolyn Haywood's

B is for Betsy, which was a real life, real girl kind of story that took place at home, in school and in the neighborhood. Written in 1939, the characters came from "normal families and ate dinner and waited for the bus. They were normal families without unicorns or fairy princesses." But, Lin says, "I saw all the things that I loved and lived [in Haywood's books] - my neighborhood, my friends and my school. The only thing that I didn't see was me." As an Asian growing up in a mainly Caucasian community, Grace Lin says that her childhood was not "a miserable, gloomy existence. But it was different." With The Year of the Dog, Lin gracefully (no pun intended) and vividly tells a story that "wraps you in a warm hug," like the Carolyn Haywood books did for her as a child, but also incorporates the identity conflicts and cultural differences that Lin felt were "threads that twisted my life into knots. Now I know that the fabric of my life is richer for them."

The Year of the Dog definitely feels like home, but it will also introduce young readers to new traditions, foods, words and customs. The book begins on the day that Pacy Lin and herMom, Dad, older sister Lissy and younger sister Ki-Ki are celebrating Chinese New Year. Special foods are prepared, happy phone calls are made from Taiwan, there Pacy's parents were born, and the New Year Tray is filled with special Chinese New Year candy. When Ki-Ki begins to shovel the special candy into her mouth, leaving the tray less than full, Pacy has the idea to throw in some M&Ms, which she loves and considers "real candy." Older sister Lissy insists she can't put M&Ms on the tray, but her father weighs in saying, "We should have both Chinese and American candy for the new year. It's just like us - Chinese-American. I think it's going to be a very sweet year!" And it is, mostly. Pacy's year has it's ups and a few small downs as she attempts to make the most of the Year of the Dog, which is a time for friends, family and thinking, a time for finding yourself and, as Mom explains to little Ki-Ki, "deciding what your values are, what you want to do-that kind of thing."

Grace Lin's The Year of the Dog is just like the tray of New Year's candy that Pacy assembles - a combination of American and Chinese tastes, but, above all else, a mixture of sweet treats that everyone loves. As the narrator, Pacy's voice is true and bright and, while so much of the story is about her experience as a Chinese American (even this description proves complicated for Pacy, who's parents are from Taiwan) it is, above all else, a book about the universal themes of family, friendship and finding one's passion. Pacy meets her best friend in the Year of the Dog - Melody, who's family is also from Taiwan. Pacy is no longer the only Asian in her school and she has a partner for the science fair. She struggles with her role of munchkin in the school play, worrying that the audience will laugh when they see a Chinese munchkin. And, when her class is given the assignment to write and illustrate a book, her teacher emphasizing that the students should write about what they know, Pacy finds herself without a single good idea. When she finally does find one, it comes from her mother's garden where she grows what Pacy refers to as the "ugly vegetables." Really, they are vegetables from her mother's homeland and, the book that Pacy writes (which wins her fourth place in a nationwide contest) is one that Grace Lin herself wrote and illustrated and titled, The Ugly Vegetables.

While The Year of the Dog adroitly embraces childhood experiences - I know I'm quite a bit older than Grace Lin, but her writing took me back to my own elementary school days some 30+ years ago - it is also a book that is rich with the experiences of a different culture. Like her magnificent book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, The Year of the Dog is dotted with stories that Pacy's parents tell about their childhood's and their ancestors' experiences growing up in Taiwan as well as Grace Lin's delightful illustrations. I found her descriptions of the foods and celebrations that Pacy's family had intriguing - especially the Red Egg party for her newborn cousin Albert and the family trip to the market in New York City's Chinatown which ended with two overflowing shopping carts and a car packed so full that Pacy had to sit on six cans of baby corn. Lin finds the perfect balance in her novel and I am sure that children with have the simultaneous experience of relating to Pacy and learning new things from her.

I love Megan McDonald. I gushed about her in my reviews of the first two books in the Stink series and when I reviewed her great stand alone book, The Sister's Club. Peter H Reynolds is a brilliant artist and so perfectly suited to McDonald's writing style. Reynolds is so multi-talented that I feel compelled once again to list all of the creative endeavors that he is involved with. A fabulous children's book author and illustrator in his own right - don't miss The Dot, So Few of Me and the incomprable ish -Peter H Reynolds is also the co-owner of The Blue Bunny Bookstore in Dedham, MA. The Blue Bunny publishes the semi-annual Hutch: A Kids' Literary and Art Magazine which features stories, poems and art work by kids as well as contributions by Peter H Reynolds and other guest authors and illustrators who provide tips on writing and creating. And, as if this wasn't enough, Peter is the the president and creative director of FableVision Studios where he produces award-winning children’s broadcast programming, educational videos, and multimedia applications.

Megan McDonald has a remarkable way of capturing the emotions and vast imaginations that kid's possess. She also has a real knack for writing scenes set in school. She has created teachers who are understanding and empathetic without being smarmy or condescending. And, these teachers assign some pretty cool projects. In the first book in the series, Judy Moody Was in a Mood. Not a Good Mood. A Bad Mood, which is the full (and greatest ever) title of the book, Judy is in a bad mood because she did not go on vacation anywhere special and return home with a t-shirt reflecting this that she could then wear to school on the first day, thus eliciting the interest of her peers. And, while she does make herself a pretty cool shirt to compete with the crowd, she slumps again when she sees her best friend Rocket's shirt advertising the Loch Ness Monster Roller Coast at Busch Gardens. Judy starts third grade with Mr Todd and a seat next to paste eating Frank. She thinks it is hilarious to call her teacher "Mr Toad," and almost works herself out of a bad mood by doing so on, despite sitting next to Frank. Mr Todd ignores this and delights the class with his approach to spelling. Judy, still stuck in her funk, responds to Mr Todd's request to find five spelling words from the phrase, "GINO'S EXTRA-CHEESE PIZZA" with "no" written five times on her paper. When pressed for more words, Judy writes "gnat," "rat," "tiger," and "spit" then impresses the class when she makes a sentence using all five words. The class is rewarded with pizza for all and Judy's mood begins to brighten. As with the Stink Series and the Sister's Club, McDonald manages to incorporate factual, historical and literary information into the story. Judy's hero is Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the United States to graduate with a medical degree (1849) and practice as a doctor, and Judy like to practice her doctoring skills on Stink and her Hedda-Get-Betta doll. Judy also has an interest in the Rain Forest and, when the pet store cannot supply her with a two toed sloth, she happily settles for a Venus Fly Trap. Little details like these, which her books are cheerfully crammed full of, along with her humorous and endearing characters make Megan McDonald's books essential.

Judy goes on to struggle with a classmate's birthday she does not want to attend, the fact that her little brother and parents get to go on a class field trip to the president's house and the completion of her ME COLLAGE, another cool assignment from Mr Todd, and also one that you can print out on the Judy Moody website - along with tons of other great activities. When Judy is moody she sometimes responds to questions with a "ROAR." She can be secretive, silent and grumpy when she is in a mood. However, none of this is exaggerated and all her actions and motivations have a genuine feel to them. Judy thinks that her classmate Frank eats paste and she tries to ignore him and his birthday party invitation. When she ends up at his party despite her best efforts, she learns that Frank is a collector. Judy, who has collections of doll parts, band-aids and scabs, among other things, is impressed. This and the fact that they both have carnivorous plants as pets improves her mood. Judy's moods seem genuine as well. As the parent of a very moody son, I recognized the brooding, stewing and petulant interactions that Judy is prone to. And, when confronted with a situation that is sure to cause a meltdown, Judy surprises everyone when she recasts and calmly turns the purple patch of Jungle Juice Stink spilled on her ME COLLAGE into a her home state of Virginia. This alone would have been a great ending to a great book, but McDonald goes one further. When Mr and Mrs Moody take Judy, Stink, Frank and Rocket out for celebratory ice cream cones at Screaming Mimi's, the kids learn that Frank has to turn his collage in late because he can't fill out the corner for "clubs" since he does not belong to one. Judy and Rocket tackled this problem when they created the TP Club, so named because Stink's pet toad, Toady, peed in each of their hands when they held him (Toad Pee, get it?) Luckily, Stink has Toady with him and Judy promptly tells Frank, "If you pick up Toady right now, you can be in a club."

The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, superb illustrations by Matt Phelan, was a hard book for me to read. Since it won the Newbery Award in January of 2007 it has garnered extra attention because the word "scrotum" appears on the first (and last) page of the book. In February of 2008, Julie Bosman explored the debate in her New York Times article With One Word, Children's Book Sets Off Uproar. Also, I think to some people, the choice of Patron's books over others published in 2007 was questionable. There has been some grumbling of late about the number of recent Newbery picks that have contemporary social issues as their subject matter. I am going to try to push all of this to the sides of my brain and write a review about this book and just this book.

Lucky, the main character of The Higher Power of Lucky, is a ten year old living in Hard Pan, California, population 43. It was 42 after her mother died, but then Brigitte came to take care of Lucky and it was back to 43. Brigitte is a French woman who was married to Lucky's father before he was her father. Not wanting to have a child, he is not much of a father to Lucky. And, while Brigitte is a loving guardian to Lucky, she knows that she misses her home in France. The meandering plot of the book follows Lucky as she works her job, sweeping up at Hard Pan's Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center where she also finds time to listen through a hole in the wall to the discussions that go on during the twelve-step anonymous meetings that are held there. That is where she overhears Short Sammy tell the story of hitting rock bottom and deciding to quit drinking. His rock bottom involves his dog being bit on the scrotum by a rattle snake and his wife taking him to the vet in the next town because Short Sammy is too drunk to drive. His dog survives, but his wife leaves him and takes the dog with her.

The book is filled with quirky characters doing quirky things as well as Lucky's quirky way of looking at them and life. This book is almost like the young adult novel version of the 1990s television show Northern Exposure, which was about quirky people in a small Alaskan town. There is Lucky's friend Lincoln who, according to Lucky, has a brain secretion that makes him want to tie knots all the time. He is an expert at it and has researched it copiously, even though his mother wants so much for him to be president of the United States that she has named him after three of them. There is five year old Miles, being raised by his grandmother while his mother does time in jail on drug related charges. Lucky gathers this knowledge during a Smokers Anonymous meeting and keeps it to herself for most of the book. These are the only children in the story. The rest of the characters are adult like the Captain who sorts the mail, Dot who has a beauty salon and Short Sammy who lives in a water tank.

The climax of the book comes when Lucky, who has begun to suspect that Brigitte is planning to return to France, decides to run away during a dust storm. Her plans don't go quite as expected, but she does rescue Miles and remove a cholla burr from his heel as well as a moth that has flown into her ear and won't leave. Most of the town is looking for the two of them and when they find Lucky and Miles she takes the opportunity to turn it into a memorial service for her mother and scatters her ashes, which she has included in her survival kit backpack, while they all look on. The day ends with Lucky safe and cleaned up and ready for bed getting a big hug from Brigitte while she explains that the papers were out because she was planning to adopt Lucky. In the last chapter of the book, Brigitte is the owner of the successful Hard Pan Cafe and Lucky is still working at the Hard Pan Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center where she has recently plugged up the hole in the wall with Fix-All.

As you may know, I am only lately coming to appreciate realistic fiction for young adults. Fantasy, science fiction and historical fiction are my preferred genres. Despite this, I think that The Higher Power of Lucky is an interesting book rich with unique details that will entertain readers, both girl and boy. However, I do feel that Lucky seems to think and act younger than the ten year old fifth grader that her character is. I am sure that, as an only child growing up in a small town with not many children and no television will allow a child to mature at a reasonable pace, unlike the media saturated "tweens" that roam the malls today. Despite this, it was jarring to me as I was reading along and found Lucky sitting in a fifth grade classroom but I am sure it would not seem out of place for a young reader.

Susan Patron does an intensive job getting inside Lucky's head and explaining her way of thinking and ideas regarding all sorts of things from ants to government cheese. The vivid words and descriptions that fill her writing brings to mind what the creations in the Found Object Wind Chime Museum must look like - jumbles of kaleidoscopic, colorful, jangly everyday things, or in the case of this book, words, dangling about in bunches. And, while I liked the abounding details most of the time, I found myself thinking often of Polly Horvath and her wonderful novels which are less cluttered and slightly less quirky, but rich with details nonetheless. My One Hundred Adventures, which was published in September of 2008, is the story of twelve year old Jane and is filled with interesting adults, just like the town of Hard Pan and is my favorite book by Horvath thus far. Actually, Polly Horvath's Everything on a Waffle which won the Newbery Honor in 2002 is more akin to The Higher Power of Lucky in terms of unique (and sometimes just flat out odd) adults and a child in a precarious family situation.

In March of 2009 Lucky and the inhabitants of Hard Pan are back with Lucky Breaks, again with magnificent, gently expressive illustrations by Matt Phelan. Lucky makes a new friend, Paloma, Miles invites the whole town to his sixth birthday party, and a wild burro visits Brigitte's Hard Pan Cafe, among other things...

If your reader liked The Higher Power of Lucky try:

Everything on a Waffle by Polly Horvath

My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath

Savvy by Ingrid Law

The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place by EL Konigsburg

Olivia Kidney by Ellen Potter

As a child, Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, illustrated by Jules Feiffer, was one of my favorite books and still is, although I think kids today have to have a certain sensibility and love of language to really enjoy it. Perhaps this is why I was so excited when Jules Feiffer published Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears in 1998. Somehow, despite my love of Feiffer's works and my own mini-menagerie, I missed reading A Room with a Zoo when if was first published in 2005. However, I think I read it at just the right time. In addition to being a fabulous book, Jules Feiffer manages to do something that I think is sorely lacking in the world of young adult literature, as you might know from my post on precocious girls: create a genuine voice and thought process for a 9-10 year old girl in fourth grade. Julie, the main character in A Room with a Zoo is not sassy or quirky, she does not get attention for being the squeaky wheel. She is a realistic kid who wants things that real kids want, and her parents are realistic adults who want to make their daughter happy but also see how her passion will mean more work for them.

Feiffer does such a great job of getting into Julie's head and detailing her thought process, perhaps because Julie really is Feiffer's daughter and A Room with a Zoo is her real life story with a "fictional makeover," as the flap notes. As a parent, I have always been amazed by the things my kids think they know or know how to do with no prior knowledge or experience. Feiffer explains this for me perfectly, in Julie's words, "grown-ups know lots of stuff they call "experience," and they think that makes them right all the time. But they can be wrong. Like my mother and father are always apologizing...So if they keep saying they're sorry, it proves they know they can be wrong." And thus Julie can be right even if they think she's wrong. This is an astute observation on Julie's part, and a brilliant example of a child's logic on Feiffer's part. Julie expounds on her theory while trying to convince herself that her "Great Experiment," her plan to make her cat and hamster into the best of friends, is a good idea. In another bit of brilliance, Feiffer captures a child's reasoning when he devotes a whole chapter to why Julie procrastinates, waiting until the last minute to ask her parents for a permission note that will allow her to enter a drawing to win the chance to take the class rabbit home for Spring Break. Ultimately, despite the fact that she has been pestering her teacher about the drawing for weeks, Julie admits to herself that she can't ask her parents for the permission note because she doesn't want to use up all her "asks." She wants to save her "big ask" for the dog that she desperately wants to own. She finally gets her note, the night before it is due and not without a argument with her mother who want to know why she waited until the last minute. When Julie can't explain her mother thinks that maybe it is the teacher's fault and threatens to have a word with her. This causes Julie to collapse on the floor, screaming "No!" Her mother relents but, in the way that happens so often with kids, she can't enter the drawing because her note has disappeared from it's special place in her backpack.

I guess I should stop here to tell you a bit about the plot, which in and of itself is also genius. Julie wants a dog. Her parents don't want the responsibility and put her off by saying she has to wait until she is 10 and a half and old enough to walk a dog by herself. However, while she waits for a dog she ends up with "in lieu of" pets. How many of you out there have done this? I know I have. We put my son off for years when he asked for a dog and in the interim we acquired box turtles, beta fish, hermit crabs, guinea pigs, rabbits and assorted cats (ok, I'm the cat person, the cats were for me...) and finally a dog. Julie ends up with a sick cat, then a hamster. Then an aquarium to distract the cat from the hamster. Then more fish. Then a turtle. Then another cat. Then a hermit crab. Then, finally, after a huge disaster that involves a fish in the toilet, a broken vase, a bad, back, stitches and the death of one pet at the jaws of another - which is handled very well - Julie gets her dog. And I cried. I can't help it. I'm a baby when it comes to animals, and this book is just so well written it was unavoidable. I can't say enough how impressed I am, as someone who has read hundreds of children's books, by Feiffer's ability to capture the true voice of a child. I read the book from cover to cover, every word. And fourth grade is the perfect reading level for this book as well. Any lower and the story would have been less complex by necessity. Any higher and the subject matter might have been lost on most kids, who have moved on, sadly to more teenage pursuits by this point. I applaud Jules Feiffer for this magnificent addition to children's literature and I plan to make sure that it is always on the shelf at the bookstore where I work so I can recommend it often.

With The Year of the Rat, we find Pacy Lin, narrator of Grace Lin's wonderful book The Year of the Dog at almost the same place we left her - a celebration of Chinese New Year with her family and friends. The Year of the Pig has ended and two years have passed since we first met Pacy. As the Year of the Rat, a time of new beginnings and change, kicks off Pacy finds herself wishing that nothing would change. She has found her best friend, Melody, and she has discovered her true talents.

As with The Year of the Dog, Lin seamlessly weaves traditional Chinese tales like "The Story of the Twelve Animals of the Chinese New Year or How the Rat Was First," and family stories about parents and grandparents growing up in Taiwan into her the story of Pacy and her family. As Pacy experiences typical American kid situations - she goes on field trips, worries about the talent show and copes with her loneliness and feelings of alienation after her best friend Melody moves to California, she also participates in family life which for her is rooted in her Chinese heritage and therefore not your typical American kid experience. Once Melody moves, Pacy struggles with being the only Asian girl at her school and also with the presence of Dun-Wei, the son of the family from China that has moved into Melody's house. Pacy doesn't like him at first and finds it difficult to welcome him into her life the way she did with Melody and her family, despite the fact that Pacy's mother has become fast friends with Dun-Wei's mother. When the other kids start calling him "Dumb-Way," Pacy doesn't join in but she also doesn't stop them, at first. The complexity of this situation is a step up from The Year of the Dog and is appropriate, considering Pacy is older in this book. Lin handles the insensitiveness and compulsion to ostracize anyone who is different that school age children are prone to and addresses them through the observations and ideas of Pacy in a very thoughtful, realistic manner.

In the author's note for The Year of the Dog, Grace Lin mentions that one of her favorite books as a child was Carolyn Haywood's

B is for Betsy, which was a real life, real girl kind of story that took place at home, in school and in the neighborhood. Written in 1939, the characters came from "normal families and ate dinner and waited for the bus. They were normal families without unicorns or fairy princesses." But, Lin says, "I saw all the things that I loved and lived [in Haywood's books] - my neighborhood, my friends and my school. The only thing that I didn't see was me." As an Asian growing up in a mainly Caucasian community, Grace Lin says that her childhood was not "a miserable, gloomy existence. But it was different." With The Year of the Dog, Lin gracefully (no pun intended) and vividly tells a story that "wraps you in a warm hug," like the Carolyn Haywood books did for her as a child, but also incorporates the identity conflicts and cultural differences that Lin felt were "threads that twisted my life into knots. Now I know that the fabric of my life is richer for them."

The Year of the Dog definitely feels like home, but it will also introduce young readers to new traditions, foods, words and customs. The book begins on the day that Pacy Lin and herMom, Dad, older sister Lissy and younger sister Ki-Ki are celebrating Chinese New Year. Special foods are prepared, happy phone calls are made from Taiwan, there Pacy's parents were born, and the New Year Tray is filled with special Chinese New Year candy. When Ki-Ki begins to shovel the special candy into her mouth, leaving the tray less than full, Pacy has the idea to throw in some M&Ms, which she loves and considers "real candy." Older sister Lissy insists she can't put M&Ms on the tray, but her father weighs in saying, "We should have both Chinese and American candy for the new year. It's just like us - Chinese-American. I think it's going to be a very sweet year!" And it is, mostly. Pacy's year has it's ups and a few small downs as she attempts to make the most of the Year of the Dog, which is a time for friends, family and thinking, a time for finding yourself and, as Mom explains to little Ki-Ki, "deciding what your values are, what you want to do-that kind of thing."

Grace Lin's The Year of the Dog is just like the tray of New Year's candy that Pacy assembles - a combination of American and Chinese tastes, but, above all else, a mixture of sweet treats that everyone loves. As the narrator, Pacy's voice is true and bright and, while so much of the story is about her experience as a Chinese American (even this description proves complicated for Pacy, who's parents are from Taiwan) it is, above all else, a book about the universal themes of family, friendship and finding one's passion. Pacy meets her best friend in the Year of the Dog - Melody, who's family is also from Taiwan. Pacy is no longer the only Asian in her school and she has a partner for the science fair. She struggles with her role of munchkin in the school play, worrying that the audience will laugh when they see a Chinese munchkin. And, when her class is given the assignment to write and illustrate a book, her teacher emphasizing that the students should write about what they know, Pacy finds herself without a single good idea. When she finally does find one, it comes from her mother's garden where she grows what Pacy refers to as the "ugly vegetables." Really, they are vegetables from her mother's homeland and, the book that Pacy writes (which wins her fourth place in a nationwide contest) is one that Grace Lin herself wrote and illustrated and titled, The Ugly Vegetables.

While The Year of the Dog adroitly embraces childhood experiences - I know I'm quite a bit older than Grace Lin, but her writing took me back to my own elementary school days some 30+ years ago - it is also a book that is rich with the experiences of a different culture. Like her magnificent book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, The Year of the Dog is dotted with stories that Pacy's parents tell about their childhood's and their ancestors' experiences growing up in Taiwan as well as Grace Lin's delightful illustrations. I found her descriptions of the foods and celebrations that Pacy's family had intriguing - especially the Red Egg party for her newborn cousin Albert and the family trip to the market in New York City's Chinatown which ended with two overflowing shopping carts and a car packed so full that Pacy had to sit on six cans of baby corn. Lin finds the perfect balance in her novel and I am sure that children with have the simultaneous experience of relating to Pacy and learning new things from her.

I love Megan McDonald. I gushed about her in my reviews of the first two books in the Stink series and when I reviewed her great stand alone book, The Sister's Club. Peter H Reynolds is a brilliant artist and so perfectly suited to McDonald's writing style. Reynolds is so multi-talented that I feel compelled once again to list all of the creative endeavors that he is involved with. A fabulous children's book author and illustrator in his own right - don't miss The Dot, So Few of Me and the incomprable ish -Peter H Reynolds is also the co-owner of The Blue Bunny Bookstore in Dedham, MA. The Blue Bunny publishes the semi-annual Hutch: A Kids' Literary and Art Magazine which features stories, poems and art work by kids as well as contributions by Peter H Reynolds and other guest authors and illustrators who provide tips on writing and creating. And, as if this wasn't enough, Peter is the the president and creative director of FableVision Studios where he produces award-winning children’s broadcast programming, educational videos, and multimedia applications.

Megan McDonald has a remarkable way of capturing the emotions and vast imaginations that kid's possess. She also has a real knack for writing scenes set in school. She has created teachers who are understanding and empathetic without being smarmy or condescending. And, these teachers assign some pretty cool projects. In the first book in the series, Judy Moody Was in a Mood. Not a Good Mood. A Bad Mood, which is the full (and greatest ever) title of the book, Judy is in a bad mood because she did not go on vacation anywhere special and return home with a t-shirt reflecting this that she could then wear to school on the first day, thus eliciting the interest of her peers. And, while she does make herself a pretty cool shirt to compete with the crowd, she slumps again when she sees her best friend Rocket's shirt advertising the Loch Ness Monster Roller Coast at Busch Gardens. Judy starts third grade with Mr Todd and a seat next to paste eating Frank. She thinks it is hilarious to call her teacher "Mr Toad," and almost works herself out of a bad mood by doing so on, despite sitting next to Frank. Mr Todd ignores this and delights the class with his approach to spelling. Judy, still stuck in her funk, responds to Mr Todd's request to find five spelling words from the phrase, "GINO'S EXTRA-CHEESE PIZZA" with "no" written five times on her paper. When pressed for more words, Judy writes "gnat," "rat," "tiger," and "spit" then impresses the class when she makes a sentence using all five words. The class is rewarded with pizza for all and Judy's mood begins to brighten. As with the Stink Series and the Sister's Club, McDonald manages to incorporate factual, historical and literary information into the story. Judy's hero is Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the United States to graduate with a medical degree (1849) and practice as a doctor, and Judy like to practice her doctoring skills on Stink and her Hedda-Get-Betta doll. Judy also has an interest in the Rain Forest and, when the pet store cannot supply her with a two toed sloth, she happily settles for a Venus Fly Trap. Little details like these, which her books are cheerfully crammed full of, along with her humorous and endearing characters make Megan McDonald's books essential.

Judy goes on to struggle with a classmate's birthday she does not want to attend, the fact that her little brother and parents get to go on a class field trip to the president's house and the completion of her ME COLLAGE, another cool assignment from Mr Todd, and also one that you can print out on the Judy Moody website - along with tons of other great activities. When Judy is moody she sometimes responds to questions with a "ROAR." She can be secretive, silent and grumpy when she is in a mood. However, none of this is exaggerated and all her actions and motivations have a genuine feel to them. Judy thinks that her classmate Frank eats paste and she tries to ignore him and his birthday party invitation. When she ends up at his party despite her best efforts, she learns that Frank is a collector. Judy, who has collections of doll parts, band-aids and scabs, among other things, is impressed. This and the fact that they both have carnivorous plants as pets improves her mood. Judy's moods seem genuine as well. As the parent of a very moody son, I recognized the brooding, stewing and petulant interactions that Judy is prone to. And, when confronted with a situation that is sure to cause a meltdown, Judy surprises everyone when she recasts and calmly turns the purple patch of Jungle Juice Stink spilled on her ME COLLAGE into a her home state of Virginia. This alone would have been a great ending to a great book, but McDonald goes one further. When Mr and Mrs Moody take Judy, Stink, Frank and Rocket out for celebratory ice cream cones at Screaming Mimi's, the kids learn that Frank has to turn his collage in late because he can't fill out the corner for "clubs" since he does not belong to one. Judy and Rocket tackled this problem when they created the TP Club, so named because Stink's pet toad, Toady, peed in each of their hands when they held him (Toad Pee, get it?) Luckily, Stink has Toady with him and Judy promptly tells Frank, "If you pick up Toady right now, you can be in a club."