BULLY-BE-GONE

Sixth-grader Millicent’s best invention ever, a substance that softens the hearts of bullies, has unexpected side effects. Suddenly the bullies who had tormented her friends are following them around, declaring their undying love. And the odor carries over the Curmudgeonly Mountains to a homeless woman who wakes up and remembers her former life as a human cannonball in a circus and as Millicent’s Uncle Phineas’s wife. While Millicent tries desperately to invent a substance that will counteract Bully-Be-Gone, flouting Uncle Phineas’s rule that inventions must improve people’s lives, Aunt Felicity charms a bus station porter into getting her on a bus to Masonville, only to have the bus threatened by a blind bear hungry for an eight-person meal. Like the bus carrying the long-lost Aunt Felicity home, the humor in this story of invention-gone-awry teeters on the precipice of over-the-top, depending heavily on coincidence and amnesia. But young readers will giggle at names like Miss Dewey the librarian and Boris Hoggle the piggy-back racer wanna-be, sympathize with Millicent’s friendship issues and cheer at the dénouement. First in a new series, this will be an easy sell to middle-graders looking for light fare. (Fiction. 8-11)