Minn and Jake's Almost Terrible Summer

Make the mistake of asking me and I'll gladly talk your ear off about the state of current children's literature and the sad deficeit of early chapter books published for 2nd-4th graders today. Encourage me further and I'll wax eloquent on the plethora of series books for that age range coupled with the total and complete lack of anything else worthwhile in the meantime. I talk and I talk and I talk, but don't listen to me too closely. For all that I lament the state of children's publishing in this particular area, there are shiny little jewels of early chapter books lurking in many a publisher's upcoming catalog, if only you've a quick enough eye to spot them. This summer author Janet S. Wong has written a companion novel to her previous early chapter verse title Minn and Jake. Understated, amusing, and with a delicate sense of how tween logic works, you won't need to have read Wong's previous novel to appreciate her keen sense of how kids operate emotionally when they have to suffer disappointment. What a horrible idea. Jake thought he was so incredibly brilliant when he persuaded his parents not to send him to any camps or sign him up for any lessons this summer. Who could have predicted that summer without anything to do is so dull? Worse still, Jake's been humiliated in front of perfect wonderful Haylee Hirata not once but TWICE in the past few days. In the midst of his misery he fails to properly write or talk to his best friend Minn, the tall lizard-loving tomboy who has a surprise up her sleeve. Guess who's coming to town to visit? Minn and Jake's friendship is sorely put to the test, however, when Jake's frustration and Minn's confusion lead to an almost (but not quite) terrible summer. Ms. Wong has an ear for childhood friendships. The nice thing about Minn and Jake is that they're at that age where boys and girls can still be best friends though there's that impending threat of puberty on the horizon. As of this book Jake is only ten, but that doesn't mean that the idea of boyfriends and girlfriends isn't still bandied about. Wong gets kids. She gets them in the section entitled, "Boyfriend and Girlfriend" in which half the conversation is transcribed in unspoken words and phrases. As the book says, "When you talk with a good friend, / half the conversation is in parentheses / You know what your friend is thinking." And the discussion about Jake's heritage is well coupled with his angry retort to Minn's question of why it hasn't come up before; "Did you ever tell me that you're white?" Mind you, I'm not a particular fan of verse novels that are verse for the heck of it. Generally I like a book's format to be justified in its text. For example, the remarkable Diamond Willow (Frances Foster Books) was written in verse because the diamond patterns of the text connected to the story as a whole. Minn and Jake's Almost Terrible Summer, however, doesn't really need to be in verse. I liked it, of course. I didn't find the verse to be dis