June Sparrow and the Million-Dollar Penny

March 15, 2017
It's a long way from the Dakota apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side to South Dakota.June Sparrow is a rich, determined 12-year-old white orphan living in luxury in the famous Dakota building--also home to Yoko Ono. Her constant companion is her pet, a very smart miniature pig with an artistic temperament named Indigo Bunting. June is home-schooled, loves the opera, and travels about the city in cabs. Then suddenly this lifestyle ends when her financial adviser loses her parents' fortune in a Ponzi scheme. June finds herself in South Dakota with her mother's sister, whom she has never met. The miniature pig is still her beloved friend, although to her great consternation, pigs are equated with bacon in her new environs. June does not like her aunt and makes only one friend in her new school. Most importantly, June has found her mother's Penny Book and information about a valuable penny from 1943 that can restore her fortune and send her back to New York City. With incredible single-mindedness, she follows the cryptic clues her mother left. Neither snowstorms nor silos full of corn nor attempted thievery deter her from her mission. There's a happy-ever-after ending that neatly wraps up every little bit. Unfortunately, neither June's escapades nor her pet pig will likely engage readers of this middle-grade Green Acres. (Fiction. 9-12)

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May 1, 2017

Gr 4-6-June Sparrow is an affluent 12-year-old orphan living in New York City with her precocious pet pig Indigo Bunting when Mr. Mendax, her legal guardian and the CFO for her late parents' company, is arrested for being involved in a Ponzi scheme. Now June is broke and sent to live with her mother's curmudgeonly older sister, Aunt Bridget, in a small rural town in South Dakota. Soon after she arrives, June discovers her mother's Penny Book-a diary that chronicles her mother's coin-collecting hobby when she was a teenager-and a cryptic message that is supposed to lead to "The Big One," a rare penny worth enough money to make June rich again. Chace's first foray into middle grade is unfortunately underwhelming. Although she is 12 years old, June acts much younger, and her adjustment from pampered city life to rustic farm life is not deeply developed. The mystery surrounding the odd message her mother left behind is not particularly enthralling, nor are June's efforts to decipher it, as the girl mostly stumbles upon clues out of sheer luck rather than by using any real ingenuity. The novel's conclusion is too convenient, and while June chooses to stay in South Dakota with her newfound family and friends, she hasn't changed very much as a character, especially since she ends the book almost as wealthy as she began. VERDICT Most libraries can safely skip this one.-Laura J. Giunta, Garden City Public Library, NY

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