KID KIBBLE

Narrator Ned and his older sister, Jess, are mortified when their mother announces who their new boarder is—Kid Kibble, the school's incoming biology teacher. And when Kid arrives with his portable menagerie, his trombone, and his skeleton friend, Ernest, even Mom has misgivings. Fast- talking Jess is an A biology student, but she takes an irrational dislike to Kid and attempts to make his life in her home a misery. She refuses to speak to him, frees his dissection worms in the house, and is responsible for other shenanigans. Kid himself causes trouble by storing his biology paraphernalia in Mom's refrigerator, and Ernest takes to wandering around the house. When Kid causes a plague of locusts in the kitchen, it looks like he'll get the boot, but Jess comes to his rescue and the crisis is diverted. By second semester the group is one big, happy family. Amusing and slight. (Fiction. 8-11)