Books for 2008-- 4, & 5: Fluff, childrens

[bunnyjadwiga]

I'm only tracking the books I've read for the first time. (Though if I read them, just didn't read them All the Way Through, they get tracked here when I read them all the way through.

4. Rent a Third Grader, B.B. Hiller
Cute yet socially conscious children's book. Read it in the waiting room at my mechanic's. Yes, I read fast. Trying to get out of giving his 'people in the community' presentation, 3rd-grader Brad Carter sees the crisis surrounding the local policeman's horse as an opportunity for distraction. Unless funds can be found to support the horse's retirement, he'll be sold for petfood! So, the third graders organize a fundraising campaign. They try effort after effort, most of which flop. However, in the long run, they do save the day...
Seems like a good general reading book.

5. The Boxcar Children #38: Mystery of the Purple Pool.
In the 80s and early 90s when the Boxcar Children mysteries had a resurgence, it seemed like hundreds of them were published-- but not all of them were up to the standards of the originals. When I looked at the publication information, I was surprised to find that this was *not* one of the Boxcar Children books that Gertrude Chandler Warren wrote herself. The ghost writer had the perfect touch, with the same easy-reader writing, the same sparky characters, and the same independence. Nowadays I can't imagine any children being able to have the kind of adventures the Boxcar children did-- they are allowed too long a leash. But the attention to detail (like what foods are packed for picnics and snacks) are still there, along with the obligatory red-herring stranger, the mysteries that seem more ominous than they really turn out to be, and the suspicious parties who turn out to be working for the greater good.

Comments

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

"I'm hungry," said Benny. A requisite line from each of them, as I recall. I read the first few as a child (was in elementary school in the 1960s) and read some of them to my daughter 30 years later. I remember an overnight flight right after she'd received a boxed set of 4 of them. I kept falling asleep, and she would elbow me in the ribs to wake up and read some more.