Big Brother to the Rescue: Ellray Jakes the Dragon Slayer by Sally Warner

"Are you paying any attention to me at all, EllRay Jakes?” Mom asks from the driver’s seat of our car, a Toyota so old they don’t even make them anymore.

"Wait. What?" I said, turning off my video game.

"I was saying, go inside and sign Alfie out,” Mom says. “And tell her to hurry, please. I’m afraid to turn the engine off. Darn car battery,” she scowls.

Ellray dashes into the daycare center, and not finding Alfie with her class, he ducks out to the outdoor play area. Yep, Alfie is with her four friends. But as he gets closer, he sees three of the little girls are together and Alfie is by herself. One of the three, Suzette Monahan, pulls the others away and they start to play a game. Alfie has a funny look on her face.

Even her new pink coat looks sad.

"Alfie!" I call out, loud as I can. "Ice cream! After we go shopping for dolls!" I add, inspired. ("There! That ought to get 'em!" I think!)

Ellray Jakes is a third-grader, old enough to know four-year-old bullying when he sees it, and at home that night Alfie confides that Suzette Monahan is being mean to her, telling the other kids to pretend that she is invisible. Ellray knows a frienemy when he sees one. He checks his suspicions out with Mom after dinner.

"It's that Suzette Monahan, that little dickens," Mom says, scowling into the sink.

Suspicion confirmed. Suzette Monahan is the Dragon, and he, Ellray Jakes, has to be the big-brother dragon slayer.

And two can play at her game. In her Ellray Jakes the Dragon Slayer (Viking Books), author Sally Warner has her hero Ellray hoisting Suzette with her own petard to make sure that his little sister will not be shunned at nursery school ever again. And since what goes around comes around, Ellray suddenly finds himself the victim of the same sort of playground scheme. Author Warner's big brother Ellray gallantly rescues his little sister and stands up bravely for himself in this installment in Warner's successful series about the Jakes family. Author Warner skillfully portrays elementary school characters with honesty and insight, and illustrator Brian Biggs fills out the details with great good humor. Other titles in this popular beginning chapter fiction series are EllRay Jakes Stands Tall, EllRay Jakes the Recess King! and EllRay Jakes Is Not a Chicken.

Expectations: Trouble Next Door (The Carver Chronicles 4) by Karen English

"So, what's the news?" Carlos asks as the boys make their way to the handball courts.

"It's bad," Calvin says. "The Hendersons moved. Harper Hall now lives next door to me."

Everyone's mouth drops open. "No way," Gavin says. "You're joking, right?"

"Remember the time he spray-painted bad words on the back of the auditorium?" Carlos asks. "I heard he beat up this seventh-grader because the guy looked at him funny," Gavin adds.

Calvin nods miserably. "I gotta stay out of his way."

Calvin resorts to ducking down in Dad's car on the way to school and sneaking out over the backyard fence to meet his friends, hoping to avoid Harper's eyes. Harper is the unanimous choice for biggest bully and troublemaker at Carver Elementary.

Calvin's dad says that the way he behaves, Harper must be troubled. Calvin thinks he is just plain trouble.

But Calvin has something else on his mind. The school science fair looms near and he's got to get to work on a decent project. And when he sees some optical illusions on the back of a magazine, it takes him a while to see all the images there, and he wonders what he can do with that. It's interesting, but for a science experiment,
he has to have a hypothesis and a prediction.

"I predict," he tells his dad, "that boys can see an optical illusion faster than girls!" My project is going to be the best, Calvin thinks. It's going to be awesome.

Then Dad surprises Calvin by inviting Harper to go to the movies with them on Saturday. Dad's hypothesis is that Harper has to live with a foster parent and maybe that is why Harper is always mean and mad at everyone. He needs a man to pay attention to him, his father says. Calvin is not convinced that Dad's hypothesis is accurate, but one thing is certain:

His cover is about to be blown!

But Calvin is surprised to learn that Harper's favorite thing is gardening and that his mother is homeless, living in a shed and working at the community garden. And Calvin's hypothesis about Harper being naturally mean has to be recalculated when he sees Harper's science fair project to test whether plants grow faster with music. Harper is not living up to Calvin's hypothesis that he is nothing but trouble.

And then, when Calvin tests the time it takes ten boys and ten girls to decipher the optical illusions, the girls win, going away. The numbers don't lie.

Predicting human behavior is complicated, as Calvin figures out as he finds himself happily heading out to shoot lay-ups with his new neighbor, in Karen English's fourth book in series, Trouble Next Door: The Carver Chronicles, Book Four (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2016). With the help of artist Laura Freeman's expressive drawings, Karen English's latest is a sensitive story about testing a hypothesis before coming to a conclusion. Who knew the girls could outdo boys so easily? Who knew that Harper's homeless mother was pretty and nice and working hard at having him come to live with her? English's short chapter books are well tuned to late primary readers, with a widening view of the world around them and a sweet sensitivity to her diverse third grade characters.

Other books in the Carver Chronicles include Dog Days: The Carver Chronicles, Book One, Skateboard Party: The Carver Chronicles, Book Two, and Don't Feed the Geckos!: The Carver Chronicles, Book 3 (read reviews here).

Two Cool for School: Cool Zone with the Pain and the Great One by Judy Blume

Sometimes two heads are better than one, even if it is your big sister or (heavens forbid) your little brother who helps you out of a sticky situation at school. Jacob and Abigail (a.k.a. the Pain and the Great One) are back in a fast follow-up to last year's Soupy Saturdays with the Pain and the Great One (Pain & the Great One), which re-introduced Judy Blume's popular picture-book characters to early chapter readers.

In Cool Zone with the Pain and the Great One (Pain & the Great One) Blume shows Jake and Abigail, still sibling rivals at home, pulling together to help each other at school. In the opening chapter, Abigail ruluctantly agrees to keep up with the baby tooth Jake loses on the bus on the way to school. Ever conscientious, Abby even avoids jumping rope at recess to prevent dropping the tooth, but scatterbrained Jake loses it before bedtime and and has nothing to leave for the Tooth Fairy. Reluctantly Abigail agees to write the fairy a signed excuse note in return for half of Jake's take from the tooth, but when she demands half of the dollar Jacob finds under his pillow the next morning, she is disgusted when Jake grabs the scissors and whacks the bill in two. "Fifty-Fifty, right?" he says with a grin.

In Jacob's chapter titled "The Soggy Egg Roll," Abigail rescues Jake and his new magnifying glass from the school bully Roger Culley, and in "Bruno's Ear," Abigail has to break away from her gym class to salvage Jake's beloved purple elephant, taken to school for "Bring Your Pretend Pet to School Day," from the jaws of a huge runaway dog named Baby, whose owner didn't quite understand the "pretend" part of the assignment.

Jake returns the favor when Abigail decides to change her name to Violet Rose. Her "Two Flower" name starts a fad for serial name changing among her friends. Trendy new Jasmines, Sierras, Keeshas, and Tiffanys are showing up daily until Jake helps "Violet Rose" find a face-saving way back to her real name again. As always, Fluzzy the Cat gets the last chapter to himself when the bell the family puts on his collar begins to drive everyone crazy.

Apparently, Blume has been busy. Book 3 of this series, Going, Going, Gone! with the Pain and the Great One (The Pain and the Great One) is set for publication on August 8, 2008. Notable cartoonist/illustrator James Stevenson (of New Yorker fame) provides just-right illustrations for this gently light-hearted series. Beginning chapter readers will enjoy these tales of a big sister and little brother who find that having a sibling as backup comes in handy--especially at school.