Clementine Book Review

Clementine by Sara Pennypacker

Clementine is a precocious six-year-old whose logic would make sense to her parents if they just asked, but instead poor Clementine is constantly getting into trouble for things like cutting her hair, using permanent magic markers, and not paying attention in school. If only the grown-ups could see things from her perspective.

I rarely review Chapter Books. One would think, given their length, these would be a natural go to item, but I often feel that they lack the emotional depth that I need to make a book feel good. Not that Junie B. Jones and Encyclopedia Brown don't have their place, but often these books feel like language lessons to me and although I appreciate their need, I personally don't place much weight on them.

Clementine was different though. Pennypacker has caught the thought processes of a child and everything that Clementine says sounds perfectly reasonable, even cutting her hair. I'm sure parents out there shake their heads, but any kid who has ever tried a little forbidden scissor action and then read this book is probably thinking, that's exactly what I was thinking when I did that. Pennypacker never deems it necessary to speak down her very young audience and I never felt like I was receiving a vocabulary lesson. There are the occasional Clementine mistakes. Example: Hysterical vs Historical.

With half a dozen Clementine books in print, this is definitely one sweet and juicy story.

I couldn't avoid that pun.