FROM OUR EDITORS

In a delightful sequel to her award-winning book,Clarice Bean, That's Me, Lauren Child has crafted another tale of the irrepressible Clarice and her slightly offbeat extended family. In Clarice Bean, Guess Who's Babysitting?, Uncle Ted the fireman has been employed to babysit Clarice, her pesky younger brother Minal Cricket, and their typically teenaged older siblings, Kurt and Marcie. And let's not forget Grandad, who forgets plenty on his own and has a habit of wandering off and disappearing for hours on end. Thrown into the mix for a bit of adventure and hilarity is Albert, the school's guinea pig, who is being cared for by Clarice over spring break.

Life in Clarice's household is ever busy, lots of fun, and filled with the same ups and downs most kids will find in their own homes. There are family squabbles, sibling rivalries, adult idiosyncrasies, and odd little habits. And while Uncle Ted is in charge, there are plenty of crises, too, like when both Grandad and Albert go missing. The book's layout has the same anything-goes style that Clarice's family has, with words that trail in all directions, fonts that please and tease the eye, and Child's collage-like illustrations, a delightful mish-mash of ink line drawings and watercolor overlaid on snippets of wallpaper, photographs, and cut-out backgrounds.

--Beth Amos

ANNOTATION

When her Uncle Ted, the fireman, comes to stay with Clarice and her brothers and sister while her mother is away, things get somewhat hectic.

FROM THE CRITICS

Children's Literature

This hilariously chaotic sequel to Clarice Bean, That's Me screams, "Uncle Ted, put me down," and "My Uncle Ted is very cool," plus a lot of other good stuff before the story starts at the bottom of the title page with "We got a phone call at five-fifteen in the morning." Uncle Ernie, Mom's older brother, is in the hospital, so she has to go help him. The only babysitter she can find is wild Uncle Ted, a fireman. Besides Clarice, there's an older brother and sister, a little brother, Grandpa (who tends to wander off) and a guinea pig named Albert. Told with a variety of type-faces and a mix of photographs, fabrics, wallpapers and sprightly drawings, the story makes great good fun of what happens when Mom and Dad leave the kids with an inexperienced babysitter. Things go wrong in exciting ways, including a car chase to the emergency room, Albert's repeated escapes and the roaring up of the whole fire department. Author Child lovingly portrays the sequence of freedom that leads to disorder to chaos and back to comforting order, the whole zany structure resting upon Mom's safe arrival home. 2001, Candlewick Press, $16.99. Ages 5 to 9. Reviewer: Nancy Tilly

School Library Journal

Gr 1-4-Child makes the most of every word and inch of space in this uproarious romp. Clarice, first introduced in Clarice Bean, That's Me (Candlewick, 1999), explains the commotion caused by an escaped guinea pig when her firefighter Uncle Ted stays with her, her siblings, and her grandpa while her parents are both called out of town. The artwork consists of flat, sketchy cartoon figures against bright backgrounds, a variety of text fonts that somersault and seesaw, and an occasional photograph or two added to the mix. Rather than a discordant m lange of styles, the result is a pleasing whole that plays up the characters' eccentricities and furthers the story's absurdity. A sumptuous serving of offbeat humor and illustrative invention.-Gay Lynn Van Vleck, Henrico County Library, Glen Allen, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.