Friend Or Fiend?

From School Library JournalGrade 1–3—The Pain and the Great One are back in another series of short vignettes. This time Jacob, aka the Pain, is embarrassed when he makes a mistake in front of the entire class, and Abigail, aka the Great One, deals with the betrayal of trust when her good friend Sasha steals her story. The brother and sister also contend with obnoxious cousins when they visit their curmudgeonly Uncle Phil and with mean Madison Purdy when they have a snow day. Like the previous volumes, this book concludes with a chapter from the family cat, Fluzzy. Stevenson's ink sketches are interspersed throughout the chapters and add detail to the stories. The situations are believable, and many readers will relate to the squabbles between the siblings and their school experiences. A nice addition, but not an essential purchase unless the series has a strong following.—_Beth Cuddy, Seward Elementary School, Auburn, NY_ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistMany kids will befriend this delightful fourth chapter book about the slice-of-life experiences of a third-grade sister (the Great One) and her first-grade brother (the Pain). The siblings trade narration of chapters that describe recent excitement at home and at school, such as a birthday party with burned cupcakes or shopping with contentious cousins. Fluzzy the cat once again stretches his literary whiskers and contributes the last chapter. Blume’s singular ability to portray the minutiae of a child’s everyday life with humor is perfectly complemented by Stevenson’s occasional line drawings that extend the story’s charm and fully shaped characters. Grades 1-4. --Andrew Medlar