FRANNY K. STEIN, MAD SCIENTIST

An anything-but-subtle tale about learning to get along with others, infused with bathroom humor and featuring a pint-sized Morticia Addams as main character. Whether it’s her mad-scientist glare, her preference for gourmet lunches, or her love of bats, Franny has trouble making friends, until her teacher suggests that she approach it as another science experiment. After taking systematic notes on peer behavior, Franny boils up an effective sweetness-and-light potion in her home lab—but then has to take the antidote when a Giant Monstrous Fiend rises from the garbage can and climbs the school’s flagpole with the teacher under one claw. Franny uses cold cuts from her classmates’ sandwiches to create a Frankenstein-ish ally, and thus becomes a hero by Being Herself. Large cartoons take up more space than the text, and Benton adds a mix-’n’-match feature that requires cutting several pages into flaps that can be flipped back and forth. This isn’t anything like a blatant grab for Captain Underpants fans, oh no. (Fiction. 7-9)