Molly in the Middle

August 1, 1999
K-Gr 3-These two earnest entries in the controlled-vocabulary category are moderately successful. Both stories support new readers through short sentences, text of nine or fewer lines per page, and no surprising vocabulary. Noise! presents two boys and a girl who drum, hum, and strum their families and their teacher to distraction. When the teacher suggests forming a band, the "Good Deals" are born. Molly tells about the frustrations of being the middle child in her family but comes to appreciate its special advantages. Molly looks older than the children in Noise!, which makes this title more appealing to the higher end of the target audience. The posed photographs, cropped so as to reveal no background, give the book plenty of white space. However, the winsome kids often look self-conscious, and these pictures are so clean, so antiseptic, that readers may feel like they should put on scrubs or wash up before reading these books.-Susan Hepler, Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Alexandria, VA

Copyright 1999 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.