Back to School: Violet in Bloom (A Flower Power Book) by Lauren Myracle

Lying isn't okay. But hurting a friend's feelings isn't okay, either. Hurting even a non-friend's feelings isn't okay.

Which is more important: being a good friend or a good person?

Oh, wow, Yasaman thinks.

The basic aha has to do with how life is hard for everyone. The specifics are more complex.

And it is the specifics, getting into the weeds in the garden of relationships, so to speak, that is putting the blight on the Flower Power Bunch, in Lauren Myracle's just published paperback edition of Violet in Bloom: A Flower Power Book (Abrams Books, 2011), the second book in the series which began with her popular 'tweener novel Luv Ya Bunches: A Flower Power Book. The four diverse but devoted girlfriends, Katie-Rose, Yasamen, Camilla, and Violet, share names taken from flowers as well as their every thought on their LoveYaBunches website. School has just started and the girls rely on each other even more as they settle into the dynamics of fifth-grade, with its shifting friendships, fashion worries, and romantic complications becoming a big subject of their messaging.

At first it's all bubble-gum, pink-fonted, bubbly buoyancy in flower-power land, but reality begins to intrude when Katie-Rose and Yasaman discover the evil trans-fats and empty calories in their class's midmorning snacks--no-cheese Cheezy D'Lites--and set out to design a class campaign for a healthier alternative. Milla's moms' suggestion, organic beet-flavored Yums, are a bust with the class's taste testers, but the friendless Natalia senses an opportunity to work her way into favor with Yasaman by designing WHY SNACKRIFICE? buttons for the entire class to help the group's campaign. The girls get permission to do a grade-level presentation on the evils of trans-fat riddled snacks, giant food conglomerates and industrial animal farming, but when their iconic cute pet pig gets loose, the girls are in trouble with their teachers and out of favor with their more conventional classmates.

And that's just the main plot. Yasaman feels for classmate Natalia, friendless and wearing a clumsy-looking headgear which makes her lisp like a caricature toddler, but Katie-Rose resents Natalia's maneuvers to drive a wedge between her and Yasaman. And when their rivalry eventually breaks into open classroom conflict, Katie-Rose winds up in detention in the principal's office.

Meanwhile, Violet is conflicted over visiting her mentally ill mother, who calls her to the school office telephone to beg her to come; Vi knows that the class weirdo, Cyril, has overheard most of the conversation and can't resist taking his private journal to discover what he knows and if he plans to tell what he knows. The de rigueur mean girls, Modessa and Quin, are up to their usual tricks, picking on poor Cyril and anyone else who gets in their way. And to further complicate the mix, Milla is in the midst of a brand-new and official romantic "liking" with the adorable Max when she accidentally (and fatally) steps on his escaped hamster Stewy.

Veteran author Myracle (author of Ten) and others in her best-selling The Winnie Years series, covers a lot of ground in one significant September week as her Flower Power girls open up to some of the serious realities of their world. Told partly in textings on their web site, partly in straight narration, and partly in imagined scripts by the film-struck Katie-Rose, this book tills the fertile field of girl world without trivializing the often stereotyped pre-teen socialization process. Myracle is a sure-footed writer who knows how to separate the wheat from the chaff in her novels, providing insight into even minor characters regardless of their likability, and keeping it all light, humorous, but nevertheless meaningful.

School Library Journal says, "...this is trademark Myracle, and those who "heart" her books will lurve, er, love this one too."

Flower Girl At Last! Superlove by Charise Mericle Harper

THERE WILL BE A WEDDING AND A HAPPILY EVER AFTER!

As that month of blooming flowers and June, moon, spoon approaches, little girls of a certain age become inspired by weddings--brides in long white gowns, bridesmaids with bouquets, flower girls with rose petal baskets, and big white cakes. What's not to like about that?

In Charise Mericle Harper's Superlove (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), her girl goes into instant wedding planning mode, titling herself Superlove, and staging her own event, a flowery garden wedding with her dolls and toy animals as guests, and her plush puppy, Mr. Mittens, and her cat, Pinky, as the betrothed.

The only problem is with the perspective bride. It seems that the blushing bride is up a tree, switching her tail and spurning her intended bridegroom. Love's Labour seem lost, and no amount of coaxing and cat food can persuade Pinky to come down and enter into matrimony. Mr. Mittens seems spurned as a spouse. Cue strains of "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off!"

But as a meltdown from Ms. Superlove threatens, Mom steps in with a plan that pleases the little wedding planner.

"DADDY AND I CAN GET MARRIED AND THIS TIME YOU CAN BE THERE, TOO."

The bride is smiling through her resurrected wedding veil, the groom is handsome, in formal bowtie with a freshly-picked posy in his buttonhole, and Superlove is a happy flower girl as her parents renew their vows. Even Pinky the Cat seems to be seeing Mr. Mittens, attired for the occasion in a natty top hat, in a new light. Author Charise Mericle Harper steps in to save their day with a sweet plot twist that satisfies, an ending that especially celebrates the "happily ever after" part of family life.

For more down-the-aisle festivities, pair this one with Julie Andrews' The Very Fairy Princess: Here Comes the Flower Girl!, (read review here) Kevin Henkes' best-seller, Lilly's Big Day,  Jane O'Connor's recent Fancy Nancy and the Wedding of the Century, or Barbara Park's hilarious classic, Junie B. Jones Is (almost) a Flower Girl (Junie B. Jones, No. 13).

Flower Power: The Very Fairy Princess: Here Comes the Flower Girl by Julie Andrews

I'M GERALDINE. I'M A VERY FAIRY PRINCESS.

HARDLY ANYONE BELIEVES ME, BUT I HAVE A SPARKLY FEELING INSIDE THAT TELLS ME IT'S TRUE.

TODAY I GOT SOME FANTASTIC NEWS. MY AUNT SUE IS GETTING MARRIED.

AND GUESS WHAT? I GET TO BE THE FLOWER GIRL!

PERFECT!!

Instantly Geraldine's fairy fantasy is off and running. She imagines a real fairy tale wedding in an elegant castle, with herself, gowned in flowing, flowery white, with a circlet of roses on her lovely hair, wearing her fairy wings, of course, and parading down the aisle amid crowds of guests as the star of the grand production.

Reality, however, is not quite up to her vision.

THAT'S NOT ACTUALLY THE WAY IT'S GOING TO BE," SAYS MOM.

It seems Aunt Sue and her fiance Mr. Flannigan envisage a more down-to-earth scenario--a backyard wedding and in Gerry's own backyard at that. Aunt Sue opts for a plain lemon cake, with no tiers adorned with marzipan roses.

Gerry's exotic fancies collapse, but at least there is that full-skirted flower girl fantasy gown to dream of, and Geraldine pins her hopes on that. But again, the reality is a bit more prosaic:

IT'S PLAIN WHITE COTTON WITH HOLES IN IT.

AUNT SUE SAYS IT'S "EYELET," LIKE HER DRESS.

I THINK IT'S MORE OF AN EYESORE.

Daddy mows the lawn; Mom grooms the garden plants, and brother Stephen practices his trumpet for the wedding march, while Geraldine tries to trim her aspirations, taking comfort in the hope that at least she can put her stamp on her handmade decorations.

And then on the big day--

IT'S RAINING! ALL MY DECORATIONS ARE A SOGGY MESS.

WHAT A DISASTER!

Can even a very fairy princess rise above it all and lend her special sparkle to this event?

Well, such unsinkable storybook flower girls as Barbara Parks' Junie B. Jones, Kevin Henkes' Lilly, and Charise Mericle Harper's Just Grace have done it in their own inimitable way, and we just know that Geraldine will strap on her pink wings and tiara and a big smile and give Aunt Sue's wedding a suitably sparkly sendoff, in Julie Andrews' and Emma Hamilton's latest, The Very Fairy Princess: Here Comes the Flower Girl! (Little, Brown, 2012). Artist Christine Davenier again brings her own fairy-dusted illustrations to the task for a wedding no one will forget, especially fans of this very fairy princess.

Other books in this popular series are The Very Fairy Princess and The Very Fairy Princess Takes the Stage.

Never A Flower Girl? Fancy Nancy and the Wedding of the Century by Jane O'Connor

MY UNCLE CAL CALLED! HE'S GETTING MARRIED!

WEDDINGS ARE SUCH SPECIAL OCCASIONS. (OCCASION IS A FANCY WORLD FOR SPECIAL EVENT.)

I'VE PLANNED SO MANY WEDDINGS, AND NOW I'M GOING TO A REAL ONE!

Nancy's head is filled with visions of herself strewing rose petals before an elegantly gowned bride and tuxedoed groom. She packs up her laciest, frilliest dresses and best shoes in high state of excitement. Dad is not much help with the wedding details.

"PERHAPS UNCLE CAL WANTS IT TO BE A SURPRISE!"

With the car finally packed, Nancy leans back in her seat and conjures up expectations of a snazzy weekend wedding.

I MAY SHUT MY EYES FOR A MOMENT OR TWO AND GET A LITTLE BEAUTY SLEEP," SHE THINKS TO HERSELF...

...Oooh-la-la! The hotel is fit for royalty, the swimming pool is like a lake and the water slide is a mile long, and after the water fun, Nancy enjoys a spa mani and pedi and lots of pampering before she dons her fabulous flower girl gown, summoning JoJo to hold her train... and then it's almost time to be the first in the wedding party to walk down the....

"WE'RE HERE! WAKE UP! NANCY!...."

"SAY WHAT?"

The reality of the affair is nothing like Nancy's dream. They are at a lake with log cabins all around. Dawn the bride wants an all-natural service, so there is not going to be any fancy wedding, no elegante reception with molded ice sculptures, towering, tiered cake, and jacketed waiters. And there is not going to be any flower girl at all.

It is a terrible blow to Nancy's hopes, but our girl bucks up and carries it off like a proper niece should. She even offers her own coronet to add some sparkle to Dawn's white muslin dress for "something borrowed" luck. Nancy is a bit overdressed for the pre-sunrise ceremony, but she takes an aisle seat and hops up to strew a few petals before the bride after all. And, she reflects...

"OF ALL THE GUESTS, I AM THE FANCIEST BY FAR."

In Jane O'Connor's latest full-color Fancy Nancy picture book, Fancy Nancy and the Wedding of the Century (Harper, 2014), Nancy Clancy comes through to make the rustic wedding an occasion to remember. Artist Robin Preiss Glasser gets to go all out, illustrating two possible weddings in her trademark style, plus a hearty bucolic party with fun for all.

Is Nancy never to make it down the aisle as the fanciest of flower girls? Surely Jane O'Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser have a rose-petal basket somewhere yet in Nancy's future! It would be tres triste if her creators let her age out of the flower girl job, especially since that means that honor will go to ... JoJo. Quelle horreur!

"Frothy and fun, Nancy's latest adventure feels as fresh as her first appearance," pronounces Kirkus Reviews.

Follow the Butterflies! Ten Magic Butterflies by Danica McKellar

Once upon a time, there were ten flower friends.

They loved being flowers, but they couldn't deny
that they had a secret desire to fly!

They couldn't help noticing the fairies who flew about their garden, not moored to the ground, but flitting about in the air freely. At last one brave flower, weary with being a stick-in-the-mud, asks a friendly fairy what to do.

"Time to get ready for a big surprise!" said the fairy.

And as fast as she could say BOO, the flower was one butterfly--and she was blue!

And we're off on another of Danica McKellar's board books for toddler mathematicians, a concept book which combines mini-lessons in counting and colors for tots. Little girls in particular love butterflies: they're easy to draw and they come in almost any color available in their crayon boxes, and author McKellar, famous for her advocacy of mathematics for girls, makes good use of this popular image to teach numeration.

With the artwork of Jennifer Bricking, one by one, the flowers magically become butterflies of different colors and fill the air in the garden, in McKellar's third counting book in her board book trilogy, Ten Magic Butterflies (Crown Books, 2018). It's a sunny, funny way to begin math lessons, with a tempting message that mathematics has its own special magic, and kids can count on McKellar to give it wings.

Says Booklist, "A similarly simple, quiet feel as Margaret Wise Brown's iconic Goodnight Moon... there is a lot to count on."

Danica McKellar's earlier best-selling counting books include Bathtime Mathtime and Goodnight, Numbers (see McKellar's math book reviews here)

Fantasy Island: Alphas by Lisi Harrison

WELCOME TO THE INAUGURAL CLASS OF ALPHA ACADEMY. THOUSANDS OF GIRLS ANSWERED THE ALPHA CALL OVER THE LAST YEAR. ONE HUNDRED HAVE BEEN SELECTED. THE FITTEST SHALL SURVIVE.

WHILE MY LEGACY WILL LIVE FOREVER, I MAY NOT. SHOULD I EVENTUALLY PASS, I WILL LEAVE BEHIND ONE HUNDRED GIRLS FOREVER CHANGED BY ALPHA ACADEMY.

BUT A TRUE ALPHA IS MORE THAN HER RESUME. SHE IS MORE THAN PERFECT PITCH, A PERFECT TURNOUT, A PERFECT TEN, OR EVEN A PERFECT IQ. SHE IS A MACHINE WITH HEART. SHE IS THE FUTURE.

SHE IS YOU.

Skye Hamilton, the former queen of the eighth-grade DSL Daters at Octavian Country Day School, is more than thrilled when she receives her acceptance to Alpha Academy, the exclusive prep school designed by Shira Brazille (femme mega-magnate who is bigger than Oprah). Skye, first introduced in the best-selling The Clique series, has few doubts that she is meant to be the alpha of alphas, and with a wardrobe of her signature dance sleeves and her mom's old ballet shoe as a lucky talisman, she leaves her old world behind without a tear, knowing she will be the best dancer there and that her #1 HAD (hope and dream), "make her mother proud," will be fulfilled.

But as her PAP (Personal Alpha Plane) approaches the womanmade "a" shaped Alpha Island carved out of the desert that is her new world, even Skye is a bit intimidated. Alpha is itself a futuristic world, with automated private baths and spas for each alpha and Draconian electronic surveillance that makes Hogwarts look like Girl Scout camp. The other alphas, which Shira terms "hypenates"--an environmentalist-poetess, a dance-model-actress, a junior Wimbleton winner-inventor, a Bollywood film star-cell phone novelist--are also intimidating in their abilities and self confidence, and as Skye struggles to keep up the pace, even in dance class, she suddenly realizes that she feels like an alpha minus. It doesn't help that Alpha Academy's competition is sharpened by Shira's reality-show structure--one slip and you're expelled, demoted to lifelong LBR status--until only one girl, the alpha of alphas, is left standing at the end of the year.

But Skye soon learns that she, the sophisticate of OCDS, has a long way to go to qualify for the last girl standing. Alpha's social structure doesn't encourage friendship and trust, and among Skye's roommates in the Jackie O residence hall she finds herself contending with "Triple Threat," dancer-model-actress who seems the favorite of dance master Mimi, Allie J., the barefoot environmentalist-poetess-recording artist, Renee, a.k.a Rayne Storm, nee Rachel Martin, soap star, and Charlie Deery, a pretty but not obviously talented late entry into their dorm who seems to know much more than she admits.

Allie J. and Charlie have their own reasons to fear the competition. Allie J. is actually Allie A. Abbott, main talent mall model, who, having received the acceptance letter for her neighbor, folksinger-poet Allie J. Abbott, has dyed her hair black, acquired green contact lenses and a flower-child wardrobe of thrift store white dresses, and faked Allie J.'s trademark mole, to transform herself into a virtual doppelganger in order to assume a place at Alpha.

Charlie has a different story. A technical designer of genius-level ability, Charlie, the only child of Shira's indispensable personal assistant Bee Deery, is the clandestine inventor of most of Alpha Island's technology. The daughter of an employee, Charlie is ineligible for Alpha Academy until a vacancy occurs at the last moment and her mother selflessly agrees to give up her plum position to enable her to join the class. A place at Alpha for Charlie comes with another sacrifice--Charlie must promise Shira she will give up her romance with Darwin, one of Shira's five HAWT teen sons, and, as she soon learns, to act as Shira's spy in keeping the rest of the alphas--residents of Jacki O, Beyonce, Hilary Clinton, Oprah dorms--away from her boys.

As Skye, Triple Threat, and Renee vie for top dog status, especially in fashioning ways to get around the no-romance-with-Shira's-sons prohibition, Allie is a reluctant follower, who surprisingly finds herself catching the eye of Darwin Brazille, Charlie's now ex, and is thus drawn into secret meetings by night with the others. Charlie is heartsick as Allie also falls just as hard for Darwin, and is torn between her need for friends and the necessity for tattling on them in order to stay at Alpha. When an opportunity to steal Shira's electronic key which will grant herself and her roommates an underground access to the five boys, Charlie has to decide what that choice really means for her future.

As usual, Lisi Harrison's new Alphas #1, the first in a proposed series, sets up her characters as intrinsic rivals and inevitably a Byzantine conflict results. As in her best-selling series, the power-seeking machinations of her alpha girls are glossed over with a bit of redemptive self-understanding gleaned from their conflict and satisfying equal-opportunity comeuppances for the worst of the social climbers in the group. This new series will indisputably strike a nerve with early teen girls who will recognize the types Harrison portrays so fluently in both series and enjoy watching their conniving work itself out at a vicariously safe distance.

The second book in this series, Alphas #2, is set for publication in April of 2010.

History Mystery: The Tangled Web: A Julie Mystery by Kathryn Reiss

Julie, one of American Girl Collection's newer historical characters, returns in her first historical fiction mystery. As the story begins, Julie is still trying to settle into her new life in a tiny apartment above her mom's store, Gladrags, on a busy urban street in the San Francisco of 1973.

"It's a mystery we manage to live here at all," Julie declared.

"This apartment is no bigger than my locker at school!"

Julie misses her big old house in the suburbs, with her best friend Ivy Ling just next door. However, being the new girl at the beginning of the school year does make her sympathetic with Carla, a new girl in her class, and Julie determines to make her feel welcome. And at first Carla seems perfectly at ease, telling Julie and her friends about her big new house in the historic "Painted Ladies" neighborhood, her talented brothers Tom and Tim, who are attending a private school, Maxwell Academy, her successful physician parents, and even her adorable Kindergarten sister Nancy. But gradually Julie and her friends begin to suspect that Carla's stories can't be true, and Julie realizes that her new friend is a real mystery.

Shadowing Carla only adds to the suspicious inconsistencies in her story. On a weekend sleepover, Ivy agrees to help follow Carla to find out if her story about her beautiful new house is true. The girls see Carla, walking a large, friendly dog, about to enter the house, and when they call out to her, she reluctantly invites them in for a quick visit, nervously adding that she is not allowed to have friends over when her parents are away. Carla hastily answers a few questions about family photos on display, but when a middle-aged man appears at the front door, Carla quickly pushes Julie and Ivy out the back.

But when Carla is absent from school the next day, Julie returns to the house, ostensibly to take Carla her missed work, planning to investigate further. Entering through the open front door, she meets the man she and Ivy saw the previous day, who seems puzzled when she asks about Carla.

"Carla lives quite a way from here. Carla's our dog walker," he says.

When the man good naturedly offers to give Julie Carla's address, Julie decides that she must pay a visit to Carla to ask her to explain her deceptions and to make sure that she is not in any danger. What she learns is not at all what she expected, and she soon sees that Carla's secrets have a story which goes much deeper than Julie imagined.

The Tangled Web: A Julie Mystery (American Girl Mysteries) gives the young reader a view of life in the early 1970s, a time in which girls and women found their lives changing radically. In the first book of the series, Meet Julie: An American Girl (American Girls Collection), Julie has to become an activist under Title IX to be allowed to play basketball for her school, and in this latest installment in the series, she and her mother and sister become involved with the rehabilitation of Viet Nam veterans in her community. There are no stereotypical hippies and flower children here, just ordinary people dealing with the challenges of their time.

As always for books in the American Girl Collection, an illustrated appendix illuminates the events and sights of those times, including, interestingly, those picturesque "painted lady" houses on Steiner Street which figured in the familiar opening to the television show "Full House."

The Art of Science: The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian's Art Changed Science by Joyce Sidman

A girl kneels in her garden. It is 1660, and she has just turned thirteen; too old for a proper German girl to be crouching in the dirt, according to her mother. She is searching for something--eggs no bigger than pinpricks, leaf edges scalloped by the jaws of an inching worm.

Ah! She has found it; a crinkled brown cocoon, anchored on a branch like a sailor's hammock. Any changes since yesterday?

Her neighbors despise the creatures that fascinate her. They believe all flying, creeping things are born if filth and decay. But for years she has gathered flowers for her stepfather's studio for his still-life paintings. She has studied the creatures who ride on their petals. She has sketched and painted them. In learning the skills of an artist, she has learned to look and watch and wonder.

Despite the tales that insects and worms were the devil's creatures, the minions of witches, Maria Merian suspected that the lovely butterflies (called summer birds) she added to enliven her flower paintings were born from eggs just as birds were.

Maria's father, Matthaus Merian, and stepfather, Jakob Marrel, were noted engravers of flowers in Frankfurt, and early on, Maria's artistic talents were recognized. She was set to gathering flowers, coloring the drawings by her stepfather and his craftsmen, and even taught the art of copper engraving to produce prints to sell. Girls were not allowed to become apprentices, but Maria worked as one without the title. She became a master of the art of water coloring, making brushes, grinding the materials for the pigment, preparing the paper or parchment for the image, and etching the copper plates. Soon she was turning out works worthy of sale to the most discriminating customer.

Marrel noticed her energy and her deft hands. She should not be encouraged to master oil paints, or paint figures or city scenes. These were the province of men. But she was one of the best students he'd ever had. He taught her all he knew of painting flowers for profit.

But Maria had something else besides artistic ability. She had scientific curiosity. In the midst of her womanly household duties and her work in the studio, she made time to study the insect life that were occasionally added to the flower prints the Marrel studio produced. She collected the tiny eggs of flies, moths, and butterflies, gathered cocoons and chrysalises and watched them carefully, making detailed drawings and keeping notes.

And she made a startling discovery--the concept of metamorphosis. Even flies did not, as Aristotle had taught, generate spontaneously from dung and carrion. Flies laid eggs, which hatched into larvae, maggots, which finally morphed into flies. Vivum ex vivo! Life arises from life.

Meticulously documented with images and observations, Maria's discoveries replaced superstition with empirical science. Without Merian there could have been no Darwin.

Maria Merian produced three celebrated illustrative texts of flowers, plants, and insects, and in her work she persisted in picturing her insect subjects in their natural environment, with the plants they needed for survival, making her also one of the first ecological scientists of her time. The pinnacle product of her work involved a year spent in Dutch Surinam in South America, and her paintings and descriptions of the exotic animals and plants she studied there became a landmark work picturing an almost unknown world.

The rains come, and the blazing sun. I must find a safe place to become who I was meant to be.

Like her butterflies, becoming what Maria was meant to be was not easy. Joyce Sidman's extraordinary biography of Maria Sibylla Merian, The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian's Art Changed Science (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), extravagantly illustrated with the Caldecott-winning artist's own art as well as the prints created by her her subject, Maria Merian, portrays the metamorphosis of this enlightened seventeenth-century woman whose energy and talent transformed her into one of the foremost observational scientists of her time. Sidman uses this metaphor, staging her narration of Merian's life and work to parallel the stages of insect development, even utilizing the vocabulary--Egg, Hatching, Instars, Molting, Pupa, Eclosing, Expanding... and Flight as chapter headings in a exquisitely-told story of a landmark life, with an opening glossary, and appended timeline, quote sources, bibliography, further reading and index. To tell Maria Merian's full story requires both art and science, and Sidman's latest book is a stunningly glorious and beautiful biography of a woman whose love for both art and life, against all odds, helped transform human science.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun! Have Fun, Molly Lou Mellon by Patty Lovell and David Catrow

"When I was your age...."

Kids are sure to hear stories from their elders beginning with this predictable phrase. It usually goes on to some version of "we didn't have..." or "we had to...," and kids usually tune out at this point.

But this time Molly Lou Mellon actually listens to her Grandma's story:

"BACK IN THE OLDEN DAYS, I DIDN'T HAVE FANCY DOLLS OR ACTION FIGURES.  I MADE THEM OUT OF TWIGS, LEAVES AND FLOWERS LIKE HOLLYHOCKS AND DAISIES."

Molly abandons the  plastic whoseywhatsits in her overstuffed toy chest and tries out the do-it-yourself mode for herself.

She loots the flower gardens for fancy outfits and mines the backyard lawn and garden gear for her own fanciful doll house in the treetops.  She follows Grandma's model and raids the garage for all kinds of boxes from which to build the coolest toy race car ever, and abandons those cliched cartoon networks to watch passing cloud shapes.

Then one day, Molly gets a new neighbor, Gertie, who is heard to complain:

"I'M BORED, BORED, BORED!"

Gertie's got gobs of store-bought stuff, but when Gertie comes over, Mollie shows her a whole new way to play.

ON TUESDAY, GERTIE DROVE OVER IN HER BATTERY-OPERATED FULLY LOADED COUPE DE VILLE.

"LOOK OUT BELOW!" SCREAMED MOLLIE LOU MELLON, RIGHT BEFORE HURTLING DOWN THE HILL IN HER TURBO BOX CAR, HAND PAINTED WITH ORANGE AND RED FLAMES.

GERTIE WAS AMAZED.

What's better than a girl with a great imagination? Two girls who share their imaginations and create some amazing playtime experiences! Molly proves a great guru of Grandma's lessons, and Gertie is soon outdoing her new friend with her fanciful ideas in Patty Lovell's Have Fun, Molly Lou Melon (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2012).   Lovell's narration sets the stage, but leans heavily on the kooky illustrative style of David Catrow, whose outrageous contraptions and stylish artistic invention keep this one well on the comic side of  didacticism. Kids will find plenty of inspiration in Catrow's unique and witty cartoons, and maybe, just maybe they'll take themselves outdoors to see what they can do with a little imagination, too.

A Place of Her Own: Almond by Allen Say

Almond is taken with the unusual New Girl in her class.

The new girl could play "The Flight of the Bumblebee" on her violin so fast that Almond couldn't see the bee. But she could hear it fly from flower to flower, fast, fast, fast.

Almon listens to the New Girl practicing from her window, and asks her mother how she does it.

"She's talented," her mother said.

Almond worries about whether she has a talent.

"You will find your talent," her mother says.

At school one day, her teacher tells the class that they will perform in a play. She tells Almond that because she has beautiful hair, she will play the part of Rapunzel.

"I can't!" Almond thought. "I have no talent," she said.

"You'll be wonderful," said her teacher.

"You are a good pretender," said the New Girl.

And Almond remembers imagining the bumblebee in the girl's music and imagining flying with the crows twirling and circling through the rain, and she sees that she does have the ability to pretend, to see and be many things in her imagination. It is what actors do. That is her talent.

The celebrated author-illustrator Allen Say has written a sweet story about finding your talent in his latest, Almond (Scholastic Press, 2020), illuminated in his lovely illustrations of the two talented girls. Say portrays the faces of his characters with great skill and delicacy, making them memorable, as he did in his two quiet and sensitive Caldecott-winning books, The Boy of the Three-Year Nap and Grandfather's Journey.

Secret Admirer: A Giant Crush by Gennifer Choldenko

My best friend, Jackson, has been making Valentines all day long.

"Who's the special Valentine for, Jackson?"

"It's not special, Cooper, really," he says.

"How come is it so full of chocolate kisses that you can barely close it?"

Jackson is obviously smitten with the cute and charming Cami, although he is too shy to reveal his feelings to his best friend, much less to the object of his affections.

Cooper watches as his friend leaves a giant yellow flower, chocolate kisses, and a giant, handmade Valentine on Cami's desk anonymously. Cami doesn't seem to get the message, but class pest, Carter Corey, and Cami's girlfriends pick up on the vibes and what poor Jackson has feared comes to pass with predictable results:

"Cami and Jackson sitting in a tree,
K-I-S-S-I-N-G!" all the girls sing.

Carter Corey is all too quick to jump on the teasing train. The very tall and somewhat shy Jackson is mortified when the taunting comes down, especially after he chooses to pass the soccer ball right to Cami at recess.

Cooper gives good advice to his buddy, telling them that if he wants a girl to like him, he at least needs to let her know about it. But the extra-tall Jackson has a real fear: what if Cami thinks he's a giant!

But faint heart never won fair lady, and on Valentine's Day Cami turns out to have a heart as big as Jackson's Valentine and the feminine moxy to handle the whole situation with definite diplomacy:

"I don't have a boyfriend," Cami tells him.

"But if I did have a boyfriend, he'd be totally giant!"

In the early elementary years, the coming of Valentine's Day provides the opportunity for the ever-popular subject of LOVE to rear its head. Newbery Award-winning author Gennifer Chuldenko combines forces with the equally-award-winning illustrator Melissa Sweet in their latest, A Giant Crush, (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2011) a Valentine's Day tale which is both empathetic and humorous.

Frills and Flowers! Annie and Snowball and the Magical House by Cynthia Rylant

At school Annie made a new friend.

One day Sarah invited Annie over to play.

And Annie can bring her bunny Snowball! Dad drives her over to Sarah's house. Annie is immediately blown away!

Sarah's house looked like a gingerbread house!

Sarah's house is a white-painted Victorian, with fancy gingerbread trim around the roof and along the porch, which is surrounded by flowers of all colors. There's a weather vane topped by an ornate whale. There's even a flower box at the upstairs window and a pink, flowering tree in the yard.

Sarah's mother greets them at the door and invites Annie and her dad inside to an equally frilly room, with flowery wallpaper, and with heart-shaped wreaths and bows, doilies, fringe, and doodads everywhere. There are even fresh frosted cookies with sprinkles for Annie's dad to take home!

Frilly things were Annie's favorite things!

Outside in the equally flowery backyard, with climbing ivy, roses, smiling angle statues, and even a spouting Cupid fountain, Sarah and Annie choose a huge blooming hosta as a perfect place to make a fairy house under its broad leaves and with a fairy table and plenty of rose petals. Snowball the bunny is happy to nibble the lavender. By the time the fairy tea is served, the girls' frilly dresses are a bit dirty and the two are very happy with their completed fairy house.

Back home with Dad, Annie has happy memories of her play date.

"It was magical," says Annie.

Annie the girly girl is in her glory in Cynthia Rylant's Annie and Snowball and the Magical House (7) (Aladdin Books/Simon and Schuster), in contrast to her usually more boisterous play times with her cousin Henry and his big dog Mudge.

"Dainty" is the word of the day for this addition to notable Newbery and Caldecott author Cynthia Rylant's beginning readers' books. Level 2 books in the Ready-to-Read series offer "more complex stories, varied sentences structures, paragraphing, and chapters" tailored to primary grade readers." Rylant's best selling series about Annie and Snowball, Henry and Mudge, and the High-Rise Private Eyes are great for rising independent readers.

Pie Thief: The Case of the July 4th Jinx (Milo & Jazz Mysteries) by Lewis B. Montgomery

Milo asked Jazz, "Do you think the fair is jinxed?"

"I don't believe in jinxes," Jazz said firmly

"Then how come so many things are going wrong? Animals getting loose, Uncle Sam losing air, hot peppers in the fireworks box... and now this."

"Any of those things could have been an accident." Jazz pointed out.

"Yeah," Milo said, "but that's a lot of accidents."

But when the stage music CD of "Viola's Violets" cued up for Viola Pritchett's School of Dance turns out to be a heavy metal song, "YOU'RE IN THE JUNGLE BABY!," the little purple-flower-costumed girls start to gyrate and leap around the stage, and Miss Pritchett almost has a conniption. Even the rational Milo is beginning to believe the July 4th Fair has been jinxed, but Jinx points out some more reasonable suspects, the Zoo Crew, a group of rough, tough pranksters who just happen to hanging around the scene of all these disasters.

But then another scene of mayhem ensues. Screaming kids are climbing in panic out of the kiddy plastic ball pit, and a little girl admits to hiding a five-foot rubber snake beneath the balls. And, she says, a big boy told her to do it. But she cannot identify any of the Zoo Crew as the culprit.

Finally someone steals champion baker Mrs. Smalley's beautiful lemon meringue pie just before the judging, and it looks like there's no way to solve the case before the July 4th Fair becomes a total disaster!

But then Milo gets the next installment in his sleuthing lessons in the mail from Dash Marlowe, teacher of the Secrets of A Super Sleuth. Dash Marlowe's directions for disguise, role-playing, and infiltration of suspect gangs gives Milo an idea how to get inside the Zoo Crew to gather evidence. Will his undercover work prove that the big, tough kids are indeed the dastardly spoilers of the town's holiday fun? Or is there a real perpetrator hiding in plain view?

Mystery books are sure-fire best-sellers with book lovers and library readers of all ages, and kids are no different, especially those just beginning to tackle chapter fiction. Lewis B. Montgomery's latest The Case of the July 4th Jinx (Milo and Jazz Mysteries) (Kane Press, 2010), the fifth in this popular series, has plenty of clues, blind alleys, and suspects to keep young readers turning the pages through the ten short chapters. Many illustrations by Amy Wummer break up the text to make reading easier, and an appendix of "Super Sleuthing Strategies" gives young detective wannabes tips, brain stretchers to puzzle over, mini-cases, and observation exercises for some follow-up fun.

Where the Heart Is: A Rambler Steals Home by Carter Higgins

"Aren't we lucky?" Garland asked. "Just traveling souls, making traditions and cheeseburgers." I didn't really know if I believed that part, but I sure could believe in the summer's traditions.

Garland always said being a rambler of the road meant food, family, and fun. Triple and I always said it meant three other things--blisters, grease splatters, and loneliness. But there we were, rambling back to Ridge Creek for another summer.

Eleven-year-old Derby's dad, Garland, has a bad case of wander-foot. For most of the year they take their Rambler, towing a grill, from autumn fairs and pumpkin festivals to Christmas tree lots, and on through the spring carnivals, but summer always brings them right back to Ridge Creek, Virginia, parking in the grass between the Heritage Inn and the Ridge Creek Rockskippers baseball stadium. Garland is happiest on the road. He cheerfully homeschools Derby and little brother Triple and mans the grill, selling hamburgers with fried onions and the newest big thing, sweet potato fries. But since her mother left, years ago, Derby has longed for a real home, not one on wheels, and for her the old, faded Rockskippers Stadium is like home, where everything and everyone is the same, especially June Mattingly, her summertime mother.

Right away, she spots the sign taped to the fence.

Welcome back, Sugar Sue.

Only one person called me that.

The Rockskippers Stadium is still wonderful, a bit more shabby, its paint a bit more faded, but what is different this year is June. Instead of inviting her to sit on her porch for lemonade and raisin cookies, her sign tells Derby to meet her in the ticket booth, where June works all summer. June is warm and welcoming, but to Derby something seems different.

The old baseball park is just about the same, and the secret space between the fence planks where Derby and her friend Marcus squeeze through is still there. The creek is there, cool and full of turtles for Triple to catch, and Betsy and Lolly, the town mean girls, are still there, looking down their noses at Derby. Candy Plogger is still plotting to win the best dessert contest with her apple pies. But between smiles, June seems sad, and her once neat flower-filled front yard has been taken over by weeds. Even her front door is faded and peeling its paint.

Derby soon learns that June's husband Franklin, has died. Derby's friend, Marcus has taken over the grounds-keeping job, suddenly seeming more serious and grown-up, and he, too, sees that the life seems to have gone out of June, and she is just not the same. And so, for Derby, Ridge Creek is not the same.

Franklin Mattingly had broad shoulders, massive hands, and an even bigger heart. Players came and went, and the teenagers who sold peanuts left for college. But Franklin was always there. The first to show up and the last to go.

But Derby needs June, and soon decides that June needs her. Together she and Marcus make a plan to get rid of the weeds in June's yard and plant flowers and paint and decorate her door in a perfect pink, hoping that some fixing up will help with June's grief. Little by little, others join in the effort, even Betsy and Lolly, who work out big letters, spelling out something secret, and a tricky wave motion from the crowd in the stadium for what turns out to be a big town salute to June.

WE LOVE YOU JUNE

WELCOME HOME

The James Edward Allen Gibbs Stadium was on its feet, cheering from the bullpens to the nosebleeds. When June saw me waiting at home plate, it felt like looking into a mirror. We had the same broken heart, sewn up, and weaved back together.

Derby comes home, in Carter Higgins' A Rambler Steals Home (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). With a main character whose reality is far from the lifestyle of most middle readers, this debut novel has a lot to say about the universal need for a place in the heart, a place to belong. Derby Christmas Clark is different sort of character, but one which readers will recognize in themselves, and the world of Ridge Creek is a rich background for this story about love and community and the need of the human heart to call some place home.

Blooming! Spring Blossoms by Carole Gerber

Sometimes it seems as if spring is a long time coming--and then suddenly it's here, taking the landscape by storm, in a tsunami of blooming trees in a spectrum of shapes and colors.

SPRING IS BURSTING OUT ALL OVER. THE SUN IS WARM! LET'S GO!

TREES, SO BARE AND PLAIN ALL WINTER, ARE DRESSED UP FOR THEIR YEARLY SHOW.

Some buds are tiny and pale and some are boisterous in color and size.

Dogwood spread their low branches wide to show off their white crowned blooms, and crabapple trees are covered with small flowers, white and fragrant, both dressed for Eastertide. Other flowers show their colors! Cherry trees bare bouffant pink ruffles on stubby stems that bounce and flounce in the breeze.

THE OAK BEARS TWO KINDS OF BLOOMS.

MALE FLOWERS DROOP. THEY'RE GREENISH GOLD.

THE FEMALE BLOOMS ARE SMALL AND RED.

BOTH OPEN AS NEW LEAVES UNFOLD.

The red maple, true to its name, bears its spring red clothes, but the redbud blooms are rose pink. And conifers like pine and balsam firs hide their quietly colored flowers so well that most of us don't see them, just their potent pollens borne on the breeze. And a windy, warm spring rain can bring the trees' bright petals down in a colorful shower of flowers!

People wax poetic over flowering trees, but for the trees, it's just their job to flower and pollinate and provide their fruits and nuts to secure that more trees will grow and bloom for many springs to come, in Carole Gerber's poetic Spring Blossoms (Charlesbridge), offering sybillant verses and a bit of botany, while artist Leslie Evans follows two girls out under the flowering trees to celebrate the spring beauty, illustrating the botany session as they go. Appended are charming illustrations of each bloom for easy identification in a lovely spring lesson.

Pastel Posh: Fancy Nancy's Elegant Easter by Jane O'Connor

IT'S ALMOST TIME FOR THE EASTER GALA!

(THAT'S A FANCY WORD FOR A FANCY PARTY.)

Not that Nancy Clancy needs a reason to primp herself out in party pastels! But this day she's fully decked out in a purple frock with polka dots and yellow posies, an Easter bonnet all a-peep with golden chicks, and matching Mary Janes, all ready to greet the guests for the family get-together with a bounteous "BONJOUR."

Nothing novel here. Nancy is always ready to dress up and play hostess with the mostest. But Jane O'Connor's latest seasonal soiree, Fancy Nancy's Elegant Easter (HarperFestival, 2009) does have a new plot twist for the ever-elegant Nancy: this one is a "Lift-The-Flap Book," and preschool fans will find it fine and festive fun.

It's definitely spring at Nancy's. Mom, still in her dowdy dungarees, hustles to hide the rest of the Easter eggs around the chateau, while best friend Bree arrives, a monochromatic vision in lilac, to help set up for the festivities. The two friends take on the table setting, opening (with the help of the reader) the Clancy kitchen cabinets to reveal the pastel Easter party ware inside.

FOR AN ELEGANT EASTER PARTY, PLAIN WHITE WILL JUST NOT DO!

Nancy and Bree then go outside to bring back some bouquets for the table from the garden, where one flap finds a bunny among the blooms and a second reveals Nancy's fancy dog Frenchy "helping" by digging up a few daffodils for the bouquet. Back inside, the girls "open" the buffet cabinet to find pastel teapots and platters and vases to finish off their fancy flower arrangements.

The finest flap trick, however, is the Clancy family table, a plain-jane wooden job, clearly not up to Nancy's festive standards. But not to worry. A well-concealed notch allows the reader to lift up and fold down the entire table top, which reveals a spotless white linen cloth perfectly set with pastel place settings, party favors, and posies. Dad, still in his regular uniform of khaki bermudas and plain tee, returns from a run to the store with a huge box hiding an elaborate Easter egg cake and a bunch of pastel helium balloons, and Nancy's parents hurry off to deck themselves out in their version of elegant attire--a tailored linen suit for Mom and a staid blue suit and tie for Dad. Everything is in place for the party at last.

Or is it? Suddenly Nancy realizes that there is a key element missing--the Easter Bunny! What kind of gala doesn't have its guest of honor? But then, whose big, furry feet are those barely visible beneath the lift-able living room drapes? You got it! It's the missing member of the Clancy clan, dressed to play the principal role. And the Easter fete is fait accompli (which is fancy for "the party is on!)

Author O'Connor's venture into the toy and movable genre does a fine job of integrating the tricks of the type into this light and light-hearted holiday story. Fans of the Fancy Nancy series won't want to miss the gala premier edition of the unflappable lift-The-flap Nancy Clancy.

Beginning Chapter Books for the Girly Girl

If you know a little girl who loves cozy kitchens, baking cookies, and shopping with the girls, Cynthia Rylant's Ready-for-Chapters series Cobble Street Cousins may be just her cup of tea.

In a timeless era of comfortable cottages and picturesque little shops, three cousins spend the summer with their pretty young Aunt Lucy while their parents are abroad. While Aunt Lucy manages her neighborhood flower shop, the cousins get to know everyone by becoming the proprietors of the Cobble Street Cookie Company. In the process of making deliveries they meet an engaging young man who soon becomes Aunt Lucy's sweetheart and gives the cousins hope that they will soon be members of a wedding.

It's a cozy, short, and sweet series. Written on Accelerated Reader levels from 3.5 to 4.2, the books feature a plenitude of charmingly homey illustrations by Wendy Anderson Halperin. A visit with cousins Rosie, Tess, and Lily is like having a sleepover with your best girlfriends!