SOPHIE SIMON SOLVES THEM ALL

Wishes come true when third-grade genius Sophie Simon applies her intellectual skills to her classmates' problems with their parents' expectations and solves a problem of her own. Sophie wants a graphing calculator, Owen Luu wants a rabbit, Julia McGreevy wants to be a journalist and Daisy Pete (and everyone else in her ballet class) wants to avoid the ballet recital. Sophie's parents just want her to be a normal kid, with friends. Everyone ends up happy in this middle-grade spoof. Exaggerations abound: Their teacher’s long list of rules includes “No thinking,” the ballet teacher threatens to chop off toes and Sophie’s parents are distraught that she has visited the library. Sophie is brilliant, reading a calculus text for fun. Daisy is clumsy, Julia math-averse and Owen frightened of nearly everything. A ring-tailed lemur wreaks havoc at Owen’s birthday, and the ballet recital becomes a sit-in. An “encyclopedia” at the end explains allusions, and there’s a recipe for saltwater taffy. This reading romp has plenty of kid appeal. Final art not seen. (Fiction. 7-10)