Larceny Is NOT the Best Policy! I Am A Thief! by Molly Ruttan

Eliza Jane Murphy was a girl of impeccable character-–the Line Leader for Ms. Delano’s class, Chief Officer of the Worm Rescue Team, and a good classmate to all...

...until she saw the big shiny green stone on the Exploring Green Table.

It was gorgeous--and irresistible.

Suddenly Eliza Jane was something else--

I am a thief!

And with the misappropriated gem in her purse, suddenly Eliza Jane felt like a different person. Even her handwriting was crooked! She was repentant right away. but there was no way to put the green stone back without admitting to the whole class that she was a thief. She pretended to help look for the snitched stone, but she felt as if her guilt made her glow a tell-tale green all over.

At home she asked her dad if he had ever stolen anything.

“Never!” he said, looking shocked.

Mom admits that she had once taken a magnet, but returned it right away. Nana Iris said she occasionally takes a couple of sugar packets home from the coffee shop, and Grandpa George confessed once swiping his friend Bill’s Yankees keychain.

“By golly was he mad!” he chuckled.

Her baby brother Jack once confiscated a submarine sandwich from a sunbather’s beach bag. Uncle Tim’s goat had pilched Jack’s underpants as a snack. It seems everyone (but Dad) had been a thief. But somehow that didn’t make Eliza Jane feel any better. In fact, her guilt just got worse.

I knew what I had to do.

Confession is good for the soul, in Abigail Raynor’s latest, I Am a Thief! (North/South Books, 2019. An admission of guilt is made to Ms. Delano, who commends her courageous contrition, the green stone is penitently returned to its place on the Exploring Green Table, and with amends made, Eliza Jane realizes that nobody is perfect.

But artist Molly Ruttan’s illustrations for this story are indeed very nearly perfect, with pathos and plenty of visual humor, as Eliza Jane spots a pencil on Ms. Delano’s desk clearly labeled Bill’s Café, Dad is caught sneaking a big bedtime slice of cake from the fridge, and even her cat is seen making off with Eliza’s bedtime bunny. This story’s theme of repentance offers much insight into a common childhood lesson on the virtue of honesty as well as human foibles.

Abigail Raynor is also the author of The Backup Bunny. (1)

How Did This Happen? Uh, Oh, Bunny! by Pamela Kennedy

BUNNY COLORED ON THE WALL.

UH-OH, BUNNY!

Bunny also knocked over Mama's plant. Broken pottery, plant, and potting soil were everywhere. Uh-oh!

Bunny got excited about seeing what was on the next page of his book and ripped it quite out of the book. UH-OH!

Little ones often get caught up in the moment and do things that later look like a big mistake. Learning to stop and think first is not easy, especially for little bunnies who are excited about the possibilities of everything.

That is when Mama steps in to find out who did it.

Luckily, Little Bunny confesses to the truth of his deeds, and his mother praises him for owning up. Next time, perhaps he'll stop and think first.

Pamela Kennerly's little board book Uh-Oh, Bunny (Worthy Kids/Ideals, 2017) follows her adorable Bunny as he gets himself into some childish transgressions.  Walls look just perfect for drawing and scribbling, but they are costly messes that Mama has to fix. Broken plants can't always be saved, and a book missing a page can be sad, but Mama shows her little one that she appreciates his confessions and hopes he'll do better in the future. Clare Key's bunny tot is lovable, even when caught in the act of drawing himself on the wall, and kids will no doubt recall times--long ago, of course, back when they were really little-- when they did thoughtless things. This simple and charming book offers a moment for thinking about the things we do!

Do The Right Thing: Sticks and Stones by Lisa Fowler.

Daddy don't say a word. The bumping up and down of the wagon jolts me back to the problem at hand. He's mad, all right, but what he's not got a clue of is that I'm fuming, too. I don't like the lying Daddy wants me to do, but what's worse is that he's making me do it in front of the triplets. I know by the looks of things we've crossed over the county line from Chattanooga. Words I can't suck back come spewing from my mouth.

"This wouldn't be happening if Mama was here. Huh! She wouldn't let me or the triplets help you tell lies in the first place. I fold my arms across my chest sort of proud and haughty-like. "The way I see it you was too busy snatching up money, jumping around like a chimpanzee in a tree, and passing out lies to--"
"Whoa!" Daddy pulls hard on the reins and Old Stump clip-clops to a halt. "Get down!" he whispers.

"GET. DOWN." He motions me off the wagon. From the corner of my eye, I see the wagon wobble. Filbert, Macadamia, and Hazelnut are moving close, so they can hear.

Then he does it. I mean he really does it. He takes off, leaving me standing on the dirt road, alone in the dark.

Working in the Kentucky coal mines isn't buying Mama that big house she wants, and one day Daddy takes twelve-year-old Chestnut and the triplets off in a traveling medicine show wagon, telling them that he going to make a pot of money and make Mama happy again, but from the short rations he's keeping them all on, Chestnut doesn't believe he's making much money at all. The triplets are getting ragged and skinny and Chestnut never gets quite enough to eat. Old Stump is pretty worn out, and the wagon is crowded, and it just kills Chestnut to pretend to be from every single town, bragging about how that traveling man's elixir cured her granny of everything that ails her, just to fool the customers into buying the stuff. She knows Daddy's elixir is "snake oil" tonic, made of grass clippings and flavorings, and that he's taking them all farther and farther away from Mama.

Daddy stops and waits for her to catch up a ways down the road, but Chestnut is still angry, angry enough to take matters into her own hands. She starts drawing up and posting advertising signs showing their wagon and telling all and sundry the next town they're heading for, so that Mama can know where to look for her missing kids. But it's been nigh onto two years, and Mama hasn't come for them. And as they travel across Mississippi, Chestnut is losing hope.

They meet up with an old black man, Abraham, Daddy knows from the coal mine back home, and he joins up with them to play his banjo as the triplets sing. The crowds do get a little bigger, but Chestnut notices that their meals aren't getting any bigger. Abraham tells her it was not her Daddy's choice to take them off from home with him, but Chestnut believes Daddy is just using the triplets to sing and look cute and her to work the crowd of suckers for him. And if it looks like if Mama can't find them, Chestnut herself is going to have to run away and go find her.

And then, in a general store in Beaumont, just west of the Texas line, Chestnut gets her chance to get enough money for a bus ticket back to Kentucky.

I tag along as usual, and when we get to the general store, I scatter. Abraham and Daddy are loading up on supplies. "Excuse me, sir," Daddy babbles on to the man behind the counter. "Where do you keep your nails?"

The man takes money from the customer beside Daddy and slides the bills into the cash drawer. He leaves the cash register wide open and moves off, showing Daddy to the nails. I take a quick look around. There's not a soul in sight. I move quick. Paper money! I reach for it, quick as a flash.

Stealing's wrong--but only if you don't have a good enough reason.

But when the law catches up with them, Daddy goes to jail for stealing the money, and the sheriff calls Mama to come down on the next train, Chestnut realizes that she can't leave Daddy in jail, and she confesses taking the money. And when her pretty, well-dressed mama arrives and says her piece, Chestnut realizes that she's had it all wrong from the git-go, and her opinion of Daddy takes a turn for the better.

Set in the rural South in 1921, Lisa Fowler's Snakes and Stones (Sky Pony Press, 2016) features a hard-headed, funny, and spirited narrator with plenty of spunk and ginger in her, as she takes care of her little sister and brothers and does what's right in the face of much she does not understand. It's hard for our young heroine to accept that it's Daddy who's been trying to do the right thing all along, and as she finds out for herself, it's not always so easy to know what that right thing is. With a feisty and plucky heroine and the sights and sounds of a traveling medicine show along the road, this is a novel that engages readers right away and takes them along for a ride they'll never forget.

Making the Grade: The Scandal by John Grisham

Theo tucked himself into his sleeping bag, warm and comfortable.

He was thirteen and unwilling to grow older. The entire week had been about the future, about testing for placement in high school and the mysteries of ninth grade. Theo liked where he was in life. He loved camping, he liked his school and friends and teachers. He liked being a boy on a bike, zipping around town. If he got into trouble his excuse was always, "Hey, I'm just a kid."

Why couldn't a kid stay thirteen forever?

But time and tide wait for no kid, and when the ever-optimistic Theo's test score misses the benchmark for high school honors classes by one point, he finds himself unwillingly in the middle of the simmering issue of state-mandated tests and college-track exams for eighth graders. And then his best friend April drops a bomb on him.

"I have something to show you," she says. "I couldn't sleep, so I decided to do this. She reached into her backpack and removed a plain white envelope. "Just read it." Theo removed a letter:

To Dr. Carmen Stoop, Superintendent of Strattenbury City Schools

I am a concerned citizen. The rise in scores at East Middle School is very impressive. But you should know the real story, On the Saturday after the tests, a group of eighth-grade teachers met at the school and behind a locked door began replacing wrong answers with correct ones....

Suddenly, Theo finds himself in an ethical dilemma. As the son of two lawyers, the complete kid insider at the local courthouse, he has become the de facto "kid lawyer" for his classmates, but Theo can't help wishing April had never written that letter or "consulted" him about her involvement in the scandal. And when the school system examines the actual tests, they find clear evidence of substantial tampering. As the news of scandal spreads through town and the controversy widens to the validity of state testing to determine placement in classes at high school becomes fierce, April is seized with whistle blower's remorse. And yet she has a point: if cheating at East Middle can put certain students unfairly into the magic top ten percent, aren't students like Theo and herself being cheated out of the best classes and teachers at high school? Is using one test to lock the other students out of advanced high school classes even fair? And then, has an actual felony been committed by the guilty teachers?

And when Theo's parents take on the defense of the five accused teachers, the usually cheeky Theo finds himself a somewhat unwilling insider and potential witness, in John Grisham's latest in series, Theodore Boone: The Scandal (Dutton Books, 2016). Although this latest in Grisham's Theodore Booneseries lacks the danger of investigating a murder, rescuing a kidnap victim, or helping the FBI capture a killer as he did in earlier books, the subject of mandated testing is one in which his 'tweener readers have a real stake, willingly or not, and the real-world ethical dilemmas that the author lays out for Theo, the informer April, his lawyer parents, and even his friend Judge Gantry are all too real. Grisham's blithely corner-cutting young legal eagle seems to be taking a turn toward more mature ethical sensibilities as the move to ninth grade comes into sight. Still, this teen sleuth tale has the page-turning suspense that his readers require and is already a near best-seller. Will "Kid Lawyer" Theo survive a fourteenth birthday and graduation from middle school and go on to solve more cases? That's one mystery John Grisham doesn't reveal.

For middle readers who haven't yet met the irrepressible Theo Boone, the previous books in this series are Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer, Theodore Boone: the Activist, Theodore Boone: the Abduction, and Theodore Boone: The Accused. (Read my reviews here)

Oh, What a Tangled Web: Just Grace and the Super Sleepover by Charlise Mericle Harper

Today when Mimi came over, all she wanted to talk about was the sleepover. I tried to change the subject, but every time I did, she just changed it back. And then it was too late to tell her the truth.

Mimi's favorite thing about the party was the number one thing I didn't like. It was weird to have us feeling so different about it. I wanted to make myself be like her, and be excited, but I couldn't. Just thinking about being in the dark, with creatures all around, made my ears hot and my hands sweaty. Plus now I was worried about beetles, too.

I was a good actress, though, because Mimi didn't seem to notice.

Just Grace and Mimi have always felt the same about almost everything. But when their classmate Grace F. decides that her birthday party will be a campout in her backyard, Mimi can't wait. Grace, on the other hand, can't bear to think about it--creepy spiders and crawly bugs and nighttime animals all around. And what if Grace F.'s backyard is next to a graveyard?

Just Grace just can't tell the gung-ho Mimi that she's afraid, so she just nods when Mimi keeps talking. Grace knows it's wrong to lie, but figures that a small nod is a only a small lie. But then Mimi suggests that they both make super-special birthday cards for Grace F. after school. Just Grace worries so much about the sleepover that she forgets about the card until Mimi appears at her door the next morning.

The first thing she asked me was, "Did you make your card for Grace F.?"

The answer was no, I had totally forgotten about it, but that's not what I said. Without even thinking, my mouth said, "Yes."

Now, not only is Just Grace living a fib, pretending to be excited about the sleepover, but she has told her best friend an outright lie. As the two walk to school, Just Grace pretends to listen to Mimi's happy talk about the party, but her mind is already at school, figuring out how she can make a card before Mimi finds out. She asks for a pass to the library but Mimi decides to come along. Grace says she's changed her mind about getting a new book and pretends to be interested in some flyers from the desk, but when she drops them on the way back to class, she hastily tosses them into the recycling container by the library. Back in class, she pretends that she can't find the birthday card in her backpack.

Just Grace tries to make the card under her desk, but Miss Lois crossly tells her to pay attention. She gets a pass to the girls' bathroom but can't find anything to make a card from but paper towels. Then Miss Lois assigns Mimi to work with Grace on their geography project, and Grace has no chance to get away from her to make the card. On the way to lunch, Mimi tries to help her friend find her card.

"I know where it is! Don't you remember? This morning, you threw away some papers. I bet the card was in with those papers!" I nodded like I agreed with her.

Now Just Grace has to go back during lunch and pretend to look in the bin for a non-existent card. And when she comes back to the lunch table empty-handed, she finds herself telling the biggest lie yet.

"I was looking for the card I made for Grace F., but then something happened. The recycling container made a noise. I think there's a ghost in there."

Amazingly, all her friends swallow Just Grace's whopper, and one by one her classmates find an excuse to check out the recycling container beside the library. And strangely enough, a lot of them hear a ghostly sound, too! Just Grace can't believe what she has done.

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive," is the theme of Charlise Mericle Harper's eleventh book in her series, Just Grace and the Super Sleepover (The Just Grace Series) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014). Growing up with Grace means sharing third-grade experiences with Harper's likable character whose well-meaning white lie spirals into a tangled web that ends in a sort of third-grade mass hysteria, from which there is only one way out--to 'fess up to Mimi that she's afraid to sleep outside at the party. Can Just Grace find a way to end the spook-in-the-can craze and keep her best friend? She can, and in an imaginative but cleverly foreshadowed way that will please her readers. Cross my heart!!

Harper's skill lies in her use of Just Grace's self-revelatory internal narrative, illustrated by her own drawings, a method which has worked so well for Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid books.  Young readers venturing into chapter books where there is the opportunity to develop a serious theme will find Harper's Just Grace just right in this funny but fraught story of primary-grade life.