Sunday, August 17, 2014

Review of Clever Beatrice: and the Best Little Pony by Margaret Willey

Margaret Willey, Clever Beatrice: and the Best Little Pony. Illustrated by Heather Solomon.

Atheneum.

2002 Charlotte Zolotow Award Winner

Clever Beatrice is a folktale where the smart and inventive Beatrice is able to outwit a mischievous gremlin called a lutin. When strange things start happening to her best pony, Beatrice solicits the help of the local bread maker who is also known to explain all kinds of mysterious happenings. He agrees to help Beatrice. As it turns out, Beatrice has all the best ideas and the baker adopts them as his own. Together they are able to solve the mystery of the pony and catch the lutin. This isn’t the first Beatrice story – it is one of several where Beatrice shows her cleverness in solving a problem. Each story shows how inventive and clever thinking can be used to solve even the most mysterious puzzle. Girls and boys will benefit from these stories because they show how to not give up, but to come up with solutions to problems.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Margaret Willey grew up in Michigan, the oldest of eleven children. She began her children’s book writing career with The Bigger Book of Lydia in 1983. Another of her tales is The 3 Bears and Goldilocks, told from the bear’s perspective. Margaret also writes YA books the recent (2012) novel Four Secrets.

For more about Alan Elliott visit www.alanelliott.com

No comments: