Fancy Nancy and the Wedding of
the Century. By Jane O’Connor. Illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser. Harper.
$17.99.
Fancy Nancy’s Fabulous Fall
Storybook Collection. By Jane O’Connor. Pictures based on the art of Robin
Preiss Glasser. Harper. $11.99.
Fancy Nancy and the Fall Foliage.
By Jane O’Connor. Illustrations by Carolyn Bracken, based on the art of Robin
Preiss Glasser. HarperFestival. $4.99.
Fancy Nancy: Sand Castles and
Sand Palaces. By Jane O’Connor. Illustrations by Carolyn Bracken, based on
the art of Robin Preiss Glasser. HarperFestival. $4.99.
Pete the Cat and the New Guy.
By Kimberly and James Dean. Harper. $17.99.
Pete the Cat: Twinkle, Twinkle,
Little Star. By James Dean. Harper. $9.99.
Pete the Cat’s Super Cool Reading
Collection. By Kimberly and James Dean. Harper. $16.99.
Some characters in
children’s books are distinguished by the way they and their adventures can
happen anytime, can be specific to a particular time, and can be used for
teaching reading as well as simply being sources of enjoyment. Fancy Nancy and
Pete the Cat are two of the most versatile of these characters around. Nancy,
the little girl with the tremendously overdone outfits and the fondness for
French words (and big English ones), is one of the most attractive creations
found in books for girls today. Jane O’Connor’s little girl is a planner and a
schemer, a wisher and a dreamer, and her preoccupation with looking and being
“fancy” makes her thoroughly endearing as well as giving O’Connor and
illustrator Robin Preiss Glasser plenty of opportunities to present overdone,
overly complicated but always amusing scenes in which Nancy’s imagination and
penchant for fanciness lead her astray. In Fancy
Nancy and the Wedding of the Century, for example, she falls asleep on a
car trip to the planned wedding of her uncle, and dreams of the fanciest
possible wedding and her own super-fancy appearance in it. Then she wakes up,
the family arrives in the wilderness where the wedding is to take place, and
Nancy realizes that nothing is going to be fancy after all. She eventually
discovers that even some not-clearly-fancy things can be unusual, involving and
delightful, and has a wonderful time at the early-morning ceremony and the
pancake reception afterwards. That’s Nancy: determined, driven, delightful.
Fancy Nancy’s Fabulous Fall Storybook Collection contains six Fancy
Nancy tales originally published between 2009 and 2013, written by O’Connor and
illustrated by – well, that is not quite clear, since the art is listed as
being “based on” that of Glasser, but Glasser herself holds the copyright to
all of it. The book’s cover is certainly by her, and it is a charmer, showing
Nancy dressed for Halloween, in a tutu replete with fall colors, carrying a bag
that says “Treat merci!” The stories here are Fancy Nancy: Halloween…or Bust!; Fancy Nancy: Fancy Day in Room 1-A;
Fancy Nancy: Splendid Speller; Fancy Nancy: Apples Galore!; Fancy Nancy: The
100th Day of School; and Fancy
Nancy: Our Thanksgiving Banquet. The tales’ titles make the fall focus
clear; equally clear is the way in which Nancy’s aspirations to fanciness will
sometimes be indulged and sometimes be brought up short by everyday reality.
Nancy rebounds neatly from all sorts of minor disappointments – this is another
of the many elements of her charm. To cite one example among many, she wears a
clever “grapes” costume to a Halloween party, using balloons to make herself
grapelike – but the balloons pop one by one, until all are gone, leaving Nancy
distraught: “‘This is disastrous!’ I cry. That is a fancy way of saying very
bad.” Within a couple of pages, though, “after some punch and many bonbons, I
feel much better. Then I get a brilliant idea that is both fancy and smart.”
You can’t keep Nancy down – the six tales in Fancy Nancy’s Fabulous Fall Storybook Collection show just how
impossible that is.
And then there are short
Fancy Nancy seasonal books that include extras, such as the stickers in both Fancy Nancy and the Fall Foliage and Fancy Nancy: Sand Castles and Sand Palaces.
The autumnal book has Nancy and her little sister, JoJo, helping their parents
rake leaves, as Nancy collects the especially fancy ones and tries to come up
with a suitable project for displaying them – which, of course, she does. The
summer book has Nancy and family, with Nancy’s best friend, Bree, braving
“terrible, awful, and horrendous” traffic during a ride to the beach, then
building a sand castle so fancy that Nancy dubs it a “sand palace,” and then
losing the whole thing to a wave. But, of course, Nancy rebounds quickly from
the disappointment, and everyone just starts building all over again. These are
short and simple books in which the stickers provide a nice added attraction –
nothing profound here, but plenty of chances to enjoy Fancy Nancy in new guises
and new circumstances.
Pete the Cat is a more
boy-oriented character and just as redoubtable in his own way. In some stories
by James Dean and some by him and his wife, Kimberly, the sleepy-eyed Pete,
usually wearing an expression of befuddlement, encounters situations from the
everyday to the absurd, overcoming minor difficulties with a combination of
good luck and persistence. A lot of the fun of these rather thin stories is in
the drawings, whose absurdity is highlighted by (for example) Pete’s wearing of
four orange sneakers and the persistent appearance in scenes of a turtle. The
writing is repetitious and geared for very young children: both the Pete tales
and those about Fancy Nancy officially target ages 4-8, but in the case of Pete
the Cat, 3-6 is more accurate. You do have to give the Deans credit for some
unusual ideas: in Pete the Cat and the
New Guy, for example, the new kid in the neighborhood turns out to be – a
platypus. As in many Pete books, there is a frequently repeated refrain. Here,
it is, “Don’t be sad, don’t be blue. There is something everyone can do!” And
of course there turns out to be something that Gus can do after all – despite
his initial concern about being unable to do things that Pete’s other friends
do with ease. The use of repetitious
writing, and the frequent inclusion of references to music, make it natural for
some Pete books to be illustrations of nursery rhymes, an example being Pete the Cat: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
Here are the familiar words of the song’s first verse and the less-familiar
ones that come afterwards, and here are some typically amusing illustrations,
the funniest of which shows Pete in star-spangled pajamas, walking on all fours
– with a bedroom slipper on each of his four feet.
Both Fancy Nancy and Pete
the Cat appear in some books in the I Can
Read! series, and both characters can be good guides for kids who are just
learning to read on their own and who already enjoy these characters from books
that have been read to them. Parents
who especially like Pete will welcome the chance to get five paperbacks from
the “My First” reading category (“ideal for sharing with emergent readers”) in Pete the Cat’s Super Cool Reading
Collection. The books, some dating to 2013 and some just published this
year, are Pete the Cat: Too Cool for
School; Pete the Cat: Pete at the Beach; Pete the Cat: A Pet for Pete; Pete the
Cat: Pete’s Big Lunch; and Pete the
Cat: Play Ball! The amusing adventures and misadventures all explore Pete’s
personality and his interactions with his friends in much the same way, and the
stories are all designed to be as simple as possible to read and understand. In
Pete the Cat: A Pet for Pete, for
example, Pete gets his first pet, a goldfish named Goldie, and paints a picture
of the fish for his mom. Then Pete’s friends notice the picture and start asking
Pete to make pictures for them, too, and soon everyone wants a painting of Goldie: “‘I wish I could paint
pictures for everyone. I just don’t have time,’” says Pete. But with his
typical enthusiasm and a little help from his mom, Pete figures out what to do
– and young readers (and almost-ready-to-be-readers) will find the solution
clever and enjoyable. Parents who want this particular book in a standalone
hardcover edition can get it that way, priced at $16.99. Parents who prefer to
have this book along with several others featuring Pete will prefer the
paperbacks in Pete the Cat’s Super Cool
Reading Collection. Either way, Pete, like Fancy Nancy, can be a fine
character for young children to meet, spend time with, and use as a guide to
becoming ever-better readers.
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