GRIMELDA

Children with messy rooms are sure to empathize with Grimelda, and they will see the twist at the end coming a mile away, to their parents’ chagrin.

“She used her broom to fly, not sweep. / Her floors had dirt six inches deep. / But though she said she didn’t mind, / sometimes things were hard to find.” And that’s just the situation Grimelda finds herself in when she wants to try out a new recipe for pickle pie: she can’t find the pickle root. And a finding spell is out of the question since her spell book is not on its shelf. The little witch finds all sorts of lost treasures in her hunt for the missing ingredient, but it isn’t until she has actually swept and tidied and hung up that she finds the pickle root. But before she can cook, something just has to be done about her unnaturally tidy house. But will the pickle root stay where she puts it? Readers with good eyes will spy the ingredient in a couple illustrations—it has help disappearing. The digital illustrations seem to revel in the mess, and there are lots of funny things for readers to spy and shake their heads over—how did that get there? Grimelda is a white redhead with huge, puffy pigtails.

Mess-makers will revel in Grimelda’s tale.