Excellent Emma

March 1, 2009
Gr 2-4-Emma desperately wants to be a "winner" to impress her distant father, who has remarried and moved to London. When a sports competition at school is announced, the third-grader sees her chance. Warner deftly captures the mix of emotions that such contests evoke. The children know that they should be good sports and support everyone's efforts, but doing so is hard when they really want to win themselves. Numerous lessons are learned by the time the games have ended, but the instruction is humorous and gentle. Warner is a dead-on observer of playground politics, and has a great ear for dialogue. The scene of Emma and her friend Annie Pat watching the boys as if they were a group of animals in the wild is funny and telling. Small-scale black-and-white watercolors add to the humor of the story. Done in a slightly impressionistic style, the illustrations depict Emma and her friends as well as imaginative items from Emma's musings, such as her teacher getting married while parachuting. Readers do not have to have read earlier books in the series to appreciate this one, but Emma's fans will be the most receptive audience for this installment.Lucinda Snyder Whitehurst, St. Christopher's School, Richmond, VA

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