Warning: Writers At Work! Violet and Victor Write the Best-Ever Bookworm Book by Alice Kuipers

"I'M VIOLET SMALL, AND I'M SIX MINUTES OLDER THAN MY TWIN BROTHER VICTOR. I LOVE WRITING AND I'M A GOOD SPELLER.

I WANT TO WRITE THE BEST BOOK IN THE WHOLE WORLD!"

Violet may be a great speller, but as she sets out on her grandiose plan, she finds that it takes more than spelling to write. She needs WORDS!

In fact, she needs a plot, and for that she pesters her "little" brother Victor to be her collaborator. Victor would rather count worms--his pet earthworms in his worm farm. But Violet is annoyingly bossy, so to satisfy her, he throws out the most preposterous superhero he can come up with on the spot.

"HOW ABOUT WILBUR, THE BIGGEST, STRONGEST WORM IN THE WORM WORLD?"

The idea of a powerful protagonist appeals to Violet, so she morphs Wilbur the Worm into Violet the Virtuous. Victor protests that she trampling on his creative story line, but agrees to provide one more line to his sister's proposed saga.

ONE DAY VIOLET OVERHEARS THE SCHOOL LIBRARIAN SAYING, "THIS BOOK IS MISSING PAGES!"

"WHY?" ASKS VIOLET.

"WAIT! THAT'S IT!" SAYS VICTOR.

And they're off. Violet can scarcely keep spelling correctly as they quickly brainstorm an inspired story about the heroic heroine who fights the big, bad bookworm who is eating the library. There is some sibling and gender rivalry between the twins as they craft their masterpiece, in Alice Kuipers' Violet and Victor Write the Best-Ever Bookworm Book (Little, Brown and Company, 2014). Kuiper's story-within-a-story premise works well largely because of Bethany Deeney Murguia's appealingly free-flowing illustrations, incorporating photographs of real library cards, maps, and actual book pages along with her simply drawn but lively Victor and Violet. Page design is also clever, with different color fonts, lavender and orange, for the distinctive twins.

Murguia is also the author-illustrator of Zoe's Room (No Sisters Allowed), Zoe Gets Ready, and Zoe's Jungle (see reviews here).