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/ . / B O O K S ➻ ( ( , % / A G E S % , + The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson ➸ Positively funny! Calvin's always getting in trouble in school and he's always doing bad on tests and he hates a girl Brain Camp by Susan Kim, Laurence Kla- van, and Faith Erin Hicks ➸ This one is verrrrry creepy, but it's also cool. I think this is at least the sixth time I've read it. I can't put it down. It's about kids who go to board- ing school and stuZ like that. Then a strange man comes one night and takes two of them to a camp called Camp Fielding. One day, while they're there, the other kids' eyes start get- ting weird, like really wide and strange. Yeah. And they figure out that the camp is using kids to hatch these weird alien birds in their brain. It might sound scary, but it's actually very interesting. Beware of kids vomiting up birds! –Phoebe Parent Note: When Phoebe says she read this six times, she is being modest. I think she's read this 20 times the week she got it. New Brighton Archeological Society by Mark Andrew Smith and Matthew Weldon ➸ This one is very adventurous. It's about four kids who discover that the parents have some club devoted to, like, destroying this fairy guy who wants their library. The library has plenty of important information. So they battle all kinds of yucky monsters and stuZ and two Chinese vampires who are their uncles. Then they find out the fairy guy is their grandfather. I like it. It's impossible to stop reading! –Phoebe Tall Tales (the Bone prequel!) by Je9 Smith with Tom Sniegoski ➸ If you like Bone, you'll love this. It's mostly about Big John- son Bone, who was a gigantic hero in Boneville. It's about when Smiley is teaching Boy Scouts and it's funny because he's always taking orders from a big hat! Seriously! And he eats a sandwich that has peanut butter and pickles on it. It doesn't have, um, Fone Bone or Phoney. I like the monkey named Mr. Pip. He's fuuuuuun- ny. He talks in his sleep about joining the circus. –Phoebe Parent's note: Whoever this Tom Sniegoski dude is: We like you. We were initially skeptical when we saw your name, next to the great JeV Smith's on the cover. But you won us over. We believe! For Phoebe to say this is one of the best Bone books yet: the highest possible praise. 59 58 56 55 61 60 57 The Twits by Roald Dahl ➸ This book is so funny! You know how it looks short? Well, it has so many stories in it. It's about a woman and a man who hate each other. First the old man puts a frog in the old lady's bed, but then the old lady gets mad. Very mad. So she makes him spaghetti, but she doesn't use pasta. She uses worms. Then, he gets very mad at her, and this is funny: every day when she went to sleep, he would take her cane and make it a little bit longer each night, so it would look like the lady was shrinking. He said to the old lady, 'Oh no, it looks like you've got the shrinks!' But then she's like, 'How do I cure the shrinks?' It's the kind of book that has funny fighting between people. I don't think a four-year-old would under- stand it. –Abby Matthew Looney and the Space Pirates by Jerome Beatty, Jr. ➸ This was my broth- er's favorite book, growing up, way back in the 1970s. Matthew Looney is an astronaut who blasts oZ from his home (on the moon, of course) in search of the planet known as Free- Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi ➸ A real adventure story. It's about a little girl with a very very very powerful stone called an amulet. This stone talks to her and warns her of danger, but it's hard to control it. So far, there are three books in the series. In the first one, the girl is in a car crash. Then they find an old house. Then the little girl named Emily finds the stone, which is the amulet. It's kind of scary. It'll give you the chills, but you also get excited when you read it. –Phoebe holy. En route, he en- counters an evil space pirate named Hector Hornblower, and falls for a princess named Annalunkus. If your kids like Star Wars (or any other quirky vin- tage space entertain- ment, like Battlestar Galactica), they'll like this. –Andy named Susan and he throws snowballs and acorns and stuZ like that at her whenever he can. You can read Calvin and Hobbes comic books anywhere. There are lots of other Calvin and Hobbes books, too, but this is my favorite. He's a six-year- old, but he knows so many big words. He makes you laugh out loud and inside. –Phoebe Parent's note: This book kicked oV an epic love aVair with a Gund stuVed tiger that Phoebe had been given by her uncle Nick when she was born…and had never looked at twice. Suddenly, she carried it with her everywhere, put it in her school backpack, and it has occupied a prime piece of real estate, right next to her pillow, every night for three years. We're talking Velveteen Rabbit- status. 17

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