CYBERPALS

Kaley Bluster is back with a new school assignment. Fourth-grader Kaley and her classmates are exploring the world of pen pals, but with a modern techie twist: The students write to cyberpals from around the world. Mr. Serrano keeps his eye on things, reading the e-mails and helping his students communicate with their new friends. Kaley writes to a number of people and asks each of her online friends to help her in her search for the perfect nickname. Light and bouncy, Regan’s story moves along by including some of the emoticons and abbreviations that parents and teachers have learned to expect from online chatting. The sweetie-pie written conversations between Kaley and her teacher stretch the bounds of believability, as do the overly long, overly goofy misspellings and homophonic confusion that this otherwise impeccable speller demonstrates at just the right moment (“bits and pizza” for “bits and pieces” and “Hamsterdam” for “Amsterdam,” for instance). With an appealing format, this just tries a little too hard to be funny. (Fiction. 7-10)