Zigzag Kids #2Illustrateda by Alasdair Bright
Wendy Lamb Books/Random House, 2010
Simultaneously in paper?
68 pages
Rating: 3
Patricia Reilly Giff, award-winning author, has begun another series of early chapter books for young kids. Set in the after-school program at the Afternoon Center at the Zelda A. Zigzag School, readers meet the same group of children in each installment. However, each one features a different child as the protagonist. Alasdair Bright’s line drawings accentuate a small part of almost every two-page spread.
I read this one before the first, but there was no problem understanding what was going on. I'm guessing you can jump in anywhere. This one's about a frizzy blonde-haired girl named Destiny who loves the afterschool program. She runs into trouble, however, when she tells a lie because she's feeling a little like a loser. It's a simple lie, but it troubles her greatly. Then she tells her friend, Mitchell, and he tries to help her fix things. Meanwhile, it's DISCOVER week at the center, and Destiny feels she's never going to DISCOVER anything - and be able to write it on the huge drawing-paper wall. It's another student, one named Gina, that precipitates much of the frustrations that Destiny is feeling this week. We all have a Gina in our lives! Of course everything turns out well. Too well??
It's a very cute story. Teachers and adults are helpers and friends, not the enemy. When I look online for reading level guidelines, I see ages 9 - 12 everywhere. This seems much too high to me. My nine and ten year olds could read this just fine, but it would seem very young for them, I think. But would a first or early-second grader, which I would think would be the target group, be able to read it? Yes, it's written in short sentences and paragraphs. Is the font the right size? I'm really not sure!
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