Chapter Book Review: Amelia Bedelia Means Business

Author: Herman Parish

Illustrator: Lynne Avril

Age Range: 6 - 10 years

Grade Level: 1 - 5

Series: Amelia Bedelia (Book 1)

Paperback: 160 pages

Publisher: Greenwillow Books (January 29, 2013)

Genre: Chapter book/ humor

Source: Bought

My Rating: 3 of 5 stars

About the Book:

With Amelia Bedelia, anything can happen!

Amelia Bedelia wants a new bike—a shiny, fast one just like Suzanne's. Amelia Bedelia's mom says that a bike like that is expensive and will cost an arm and a leg. Amelia Bedelia can't give away one of her arms and one of her legs! She needs both arms to steer, and both legs to pedal. What Amelia Bedelia needs is a job.

Look out! Here comes Amelia Bedelia, and she means business!

About the Author:

 Herman Parish is the author of Amelia Bedelia children's book series, nephew of original author, Peggy Parish. Having grown up with his aunt’s tales of Amelia’s humorous misadventures, Herman decided to carry on the legacy after his aunt’s death in 1988. He did not wish to entrust the future of the series into the hands of a children’s author outside of the family. Since Peggy had the summers off from teaching, she was able to stay with the Parish family for extended periods of time, allowing Herman and Peggy to develop a close relationship. More importantly, this gave Herman a chance to keenly observe Peggy during her writing processes, gaining great insight to the road ahead of him. To carry on the essence of the series, Herman thoroughly examined his aunt’s work and did his best to capture what exactly made the character of Amelia Bedelia such a hit. Having editor Susan Hirschman and illustrator Lynn Sweat in common with his aunt helped to make the transition. He has added thirteen more books to the series. Herman is a resident of Princeton, New Jersey, and travels to libraries and schools across the United States, speaking and inspiring young children. The importance of revising and editing is often stressed during these dynamic lectures. He has presented to students in more than 22 states.

About the Illustrator:

Although I was born and grew up in Montana, I've spent so many years in Arizona, I feel like a native. I grew up with an artist dad and have followed that path all my life. I graduated from the art school at the University of Montana in Missoula. After years of freelancing as a graphic artist, I fell into illustrating children's books...have done almost 80 now and also a lot of magazine work. My books have been selected for awards by the American Library Association (the Schneider Family Book Award 2011), the Junior Library Guild, the Society of School Librarians International, the Children's Book Council, and the Oppenheimer Toy Portfolio. Many of my illustrations are rendered in gouache, with a black ink or pencil line, but sometimes I use a softer style with chalk pastels and acrylic medium.

Website

My Thoughts:

I've never read the picture books, and this is the first Amelia Bedelia chapter book that I've read with my kids. It was cute, and even funny at times. Amelia Bedelia wants a new bike, so she goes through a string of jobs and business ventures to save up enough money for one.

She constantly misinterprets every day sayings like "step on it" and "it's on the house" which provides the source for much of the humor in the book. The only problem with this is that I'm not sure how many kids that age would understand the jokes. A lot of the writing and vocabulary was over the comprehension level of most kids in the target age group.

While the book was cute, it didn't really do it for me. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't fantastic, either. This one falls into the middle for me.

THREE STARS