  | Full Text Reviews: Booklist - 11/01/2014 Mac isn’t thrilled when his weary mother assigns the job of fixing weekday dinners to him. But when his classmate Aretha points out that cooking is chemistry, this self-styled “genius fourth-grade scientist” changes his attitude. His spaghetti supper is a fiasco, while his brownies are excellent. Unfortunately, the brownies were ordered by a bully, who sells them at school and demands more each day. When Mac approaches his bullying problem “as a scientific challenge,” he comes up with an original solution. This large-print chapter book is more credible than most that deal with bullying because Mac’s scientific interest offers him a mind-set that’s a viable alternative to his previous victim mentality. Written in first person from Mac’s point of view, the narrative is strong on characterization and dialogue. The many droll pencil drawings underscore the story’s humor and the characters’ likability. First published in three segments as part of the Cheerios Spoonfuls of Stories program (yes, there’s a bit of product placement here), this is an engaging addition to the Phineas L. MacGuire series. - Copyright 2014 Booklist. Bulletin for the Center... - 01/01/2015 It turns out it was a mistake for nine-year-old Phineas (from Phineas MacGuire Erupts!: The First Experiment, BCCB 7/06) to complain about his mother’s cooking, because now he’s on the hook for making dinners for his family. He begins to find some scientific appeal to the project (“As a scientist, I was hoping for the kind of dinner that might blow up at the last minute”) and learns more about cooking as he and his friends try to develop a competition brownie recipe-and as he tries to fend off the school bully with the bully’s required brownies. Phineas is particularly endearing as a science-loving kid who’s not a know-it-all genius but is an enthusiastic novice drawn by slime and explosions, and his culinary education is plausible and amusingly described (leavening is “kind of like the yeast ate a bunch of junk food and farted”). The retrain-the-bully subplot isn’t completely original, but the kid-level pragmatism keeps Phineas’ scientific approach from being didactic, and the fact that the bully never self-recognizes is absolutely believable. McDaniels’ black and white spot art and full-page illustrations have a fine sense of the ridiculous, accentuating the silly side of the story. Firm friends of Phineas won’t need any encouragement to dive into this new adventure, and the cooking theme-especially the brownie-baking-will draw a wide audience. DS - Copyright 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Loading...
 |