HANK PRANK IN LOVE

When Hank sees his new Vietnamese classmate, he doesn't just fall in love, his whole body BOINNGS. Naturally, he's appalled. What will his friends say to him? What will he say to her? The latter problem is quickly solved when he falls over her on the playground, and the former by a quick offense--""You are in love, aren't you, Hankie?"" ""Yes."" ""You are so in. . .what?"" Over the next few weeks, Hank and Linh become good friends, once they overcome their shyness, but the episode comes to a bittersweet end when part of Linh's family, which had been given up for dead, is located in the US, and she leaves to join them. Simple, sometimes poignant black-and-white illustrations decorate a text printed in comfortably large type. Compressing so much story into 64 pages doesn't leave much space for character study; this reads like a chapter in a longer book, and moves at a very quick pace. The Britishisms are unobtrusive.