THE PET NANNY 2

A girl navigates the workday stressors of being the new kid at school, running her own petsitting business, and becoming a teenager in Braband’s middle-grade chapter-book sequel.

Chicago-based Libby Lancaster is about to turn 13, and she’s nervous. Her estranged parents have recently reconciled, and she’ll start eighth grade in the fall as “the new kid” in a new school. The main constant in her life is her successful pet-sitting service for tenants in her family’s apartment building; it provides an outlet when her anxieties become overwhelming. Summer concludes with a surprise 13th birthday party, and then Libby begins middle school. Her teacher is delightfully quirky and has modern ideas about education (on Fridays, for instance, the students become the teachers). But as Libby’s school workload grows, so does her business, which includes caring for a cat that her vice principal secretly keeps in his office and a few additional dogs to walk at home. Although she starts the year with every intention of successfully juggling school, work, and her home life, she begins to struggle. The promise of a “new addition” to the family brings more excitement and trepidation—but it may not be the new pet that Libby’s hoping for. Libby’s story is upbeat and easygoing, with a sense of humor that often falls into dad-joke territory: “If just anyone speaks off the cuff, then they adlib. But when I do it, it’s ‘Ad-libbying.’” However, given her age, Libby’s naïveté regarding a new romance and her mother’s pregnancy is confounding. The adults in Libby’s world are often irresponsible, immature, and even borderline creepy, as in the case of an omnipresent building superintendent who gives Libby a clubhouse as a gift, which only she and he know how to access; this makes for uncomfortable reading at times. In addition, trivial matters sometimes bury important plot points, and a cliffhanger ending may leave readers feeling rudderless.

Lighthearted, if somewhat meandering, adventures of a determined petsitter.