Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and-most serious-civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. ![]() Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves-during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement. Little Blue Truck keeps on truckin’-but not without some backfires. The illustrations, done by Joseph in the style of original series collaborator Jill McElmurry, are pleasant enough, but his compositions often feel stiff and forced. Schertle’s verse, usually reliable, stumbles more than once stanzas such as “But Valentine’s Day / didn’t seem much fun / when he didn’t get cards / from anyone” will cause hitches during read-alouds. In this, Blue’s seventh outing, it’s not just the sturdy protagonist that seems to be wilting. Blue is therefore surprised (but readers may not be) when he pulls into his garage to be greeted by all his friends with a shiny blue valentine just for him. But as Blue heads home, his deliveries complete, his headlight eyes are sad and his front bumper droops ever so slightly. With each delivery there is an exchange of Beeps from Blue and the appropriate animal sounds from his friends, Blue’s Beeps always set in blue and the animal’s vocalization in a color that matches the card it receives. His bed overflowing with cards, Blue sets out to deliver a yellow card with purple polka dots and a shiny purple heart to Hen, one with a shiny fuchsia heart to Pig, a big, shiny, red heart-shaped card to Horse, and so on. Little Blue Truck feels, well, blue when he delivers valentine after valentine but receives nary a one. and she can reach right up "and turn out the light if I fall asleep in her lap." It's rare to find so much vitality, spontaneity, and depth of feeling in such a simple, young book. ![]() This last sequence is a glory: Grandma feeling like Goldilocks, trying out all the chairs the very rose-covered chair "we were all dreaming of," plump in the middle of the floor the little girl and her mother, snuggled in it together. Then the jar is full the coins are rolled in paper wrappers, and exchanged for bills and "Mama and Grandma and I" go shopping for the chair. A wonderful, beautiful, fat, soft armchair." This is because-we see it as she tells it-all the family's furniture burned up in a fire and though neighbors and friends and relatives brought replacements (a buttercup-and-spring-green spread to contrast with the charred gray gloom just preceding), "we still have no sofas and no big chairs." Only straight, hard kitchen chairs. "When we can't get a single other coin into the jar, we are going to take out all the money and go and buy a chair. At home is a glass jar, into which goes all Mama's change from tips and the money Grandma saves whenever she gets a bargain at the market. ![]() "My mother works as a waitress in the Blue Tile Diner," the little-girl narrator begins-and to the accompaniment of vividly colored, direct, proto-primitive pictures, the real-life-like story comes out. A tender knockout-from the author/illustrator of, most recently and auspiciously, Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe.
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