by Lauren Myracle
ages: 7-9
First sentence: “Today, my big sister Sandra is taking me to school.”
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I know: I don’t usually do beginning chapter books on here, but I had a book talk last week to do (picture and beginning chapter books) and I thought I’d take a few minutes to read this one so I could talk about it.

First off: will it turn off the boys if I say this is adorable?? Because it IS. So. Freaking. Adorable.

Seven-year-old Ty is in second grade. He’s got two older sisters — one old enough to drive — and a brand-new three-month-old baby sister (and I thought I spread my kids out). He’s been the baby of the family for so long, that he’s not taking to the new addition very well. And that’s putting it mildly.

He does okay at school, though his best friend is in the hospital recovering from a bout of leukemia, and his second best friend is a girl, Lexie, that’s a bit wild. (She brings rubber bands to school because she wants to play “shooting people”. Ty doesn’t want to.) Then they go on a field trip to a local aquarium. Lexie breaks the rules and gets away with it. Ty breaks the rules — he wanders off — and gets in a ton of trouble. It’s not fair.

It does have a happily-ever-after type of ending; Ty does figure things out, with the help of his older sisters, and things do come right in the end. But there’s this moment, when he’s in trouble and his mom is lecturing him that Myracle got spot-on from both the mother and child’s point of view. It was actually the relationship between Ty and his mom that won the book over for me. It was a delightful little story with an absolutely adorable boy as it’s focus.

Worth handing to your first or second grader.