Review: Claudia and the Bad Joke by Arley Nopra & Ann M Martin

The BSC Graphix series continues to go from strength to strength with a new series adaptor coming on board--Arley Nopra. Nopra's first (and, hopefully, not last,) addition to the series is Claudia and the Bad Joke. This one retells the story of how a slapstick film festival at the Stoneybrook Public Library leads to all of the local kids playing pranks on each other, which in turn leads to an incident in which Claudia breaks her leg whilst on a babysitting job. Which, in turn, leads to the other members of the BSC declaring a practical joke war on Betsy Sobak, while Claudia takes the more mature path of contemplating whether babysitting is such a great idea. 

This was an entertaining read. As is often the case with these books, the characters and situations aren't entirely realistic. The kids go about solving the problems for themselves without adult involvement and come up with a unique solution that works--which makes for fun reading, though I doubt things would work out so neatly in real life, or, when an injury occurs that adults wouldn't get involved. The illustrations are well done, and I just love that there are now plenty of these books for readers, new and old, to enjoy.

Recommended.

PS: There are two more BSC Graphix novels in the works, Kristy and the Walking Disaster and Mallory and the Trouble With Twins. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more

Who Else Writes Like V.C. Andrews?

Image
Are there any other authors out there who write similar novels to V.C. Andrews? This is a question I see asked frequently in excellent fan run V.C. Andrews Facebook groups like Attic Secrets and The Dolls Club. In times gone by, The Complete V.C. Andrews webpage (which is no more, but the best bits are archived by Lorraine at the Attic Secrets blog,) had a comprehensive list. Today, I thought I would put forward a few of my own thoughts and recommendations. (Note: This will focus mainly on the series and novels written by the actual V.C. Andrews and not ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman, who has a distinctive writing style of his own.) The Classics This is probably the best place to start, as it is likely that some of these novels influenced V.C. Andrews herself. Andrews was a fan of Charles Dickens, mentioning the author in the prologue of her most famous novel Flowers in the Attic. I have yet to read all of Dickens novels (I've read about half,) but I can feel a slight V.C. Andrews vi
Read more