Once Upon a Spring Break! The Vanderbeekers to the Rescue by Karina Yan Glaser

When her phone rang, Mom weaved through kids, pets and stacks of books. The Vanderbeekers heard her say, "Really?" and "That would be wonderful!"

"That was Perch Magazine!" Mom reported. "They want to feature me and my business in their October issue! There will be a whole magazine spread about my cookies. They're going to send a photographer to the brownstone!"

Mom was going to be a celebrity!

The Vanderbeeker kids' calendar for spring break had already been full, with Isa's violin audition for the community orchestra, constructing Oliver's tree house with Uncle Arthur, and Mom's birthday on Saturday. Now their schedule is interrupted by Mom's interview and the nightly appearance of homeless animals left at their back door--first five tiny kittens, then two guinea pigs, a long-eared dog, and six chickens.

Even the Vanderbeekers, who already have a fat cat named George Washington, a dog named Franz, and a rabbit named Paganini, know they can't keep them all, but when all the animal shelters turn out to be full, the kids put up giveaway flyers all over their neighborhood. There are no takers, but the Vanderbeekers soon receive a fine notice of $450 for unauthorized postings. Trying to get back in her good graces, the kids stay up all night to paint the living room for Mom's big photo shoot, only to discover that what looked like lovely shade of rose at night is a downright scary fuchsia by day.

And then things really get serious, when a grumpy health inspector makes a surprise visit to inspect the premises. Apparently, a Home Processors' License requires a separate kitchen for products for sale and forbids any animals on the premises. An apartment with two dogs, six cats, two guinea pigs and six feather-shedding chickens is way beyond the pale. Mom realizes she's been operating an illegal baking business and sadly drags out her old accounting textbooks to prepare to go back to her former job.

Obviously the Vanderbeeker kids must find a new place for their mother's promising career in the bakery business, not to mention finding homes for their new menagerie. But the upbeat Vanderbeekers take on the job with their usual elan and find a fitting joint solution to both problems in the third volume in Karina Yan Glaser's just-published The Vanderbeekers to the Rescue (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). Like her two earlier best-sellers, The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street (1) and The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden (2) (read reviews here) have been hailed for their return to family stories of adventurous and resourceful children in a diverse, but close-knit community where they have free range. Often likened to such family-centric classics as Eleanor Estes' The Moffats, Bevery Cleary's Beezus and Ramona, and Jeanne Birdsall's The Penderwicks,. the Vanderbeekers are like a breath of fresh air among fiction for middle readers, a close bunch of siblings who rely on each other and their neighborhood relationships to make their own way in solving problems. Authentic and charming, these contemporary stories of Isa, Jessie, Oliver, Hyacinth, and Laney are realistic and yet funny, lively and hopeful, and as sweet and satisfying as one of Mom's chocolate sea salt caramel cookies.

Watch for the promised fourth book in this popular series, The Vanderbeekers Lost and Found.