MORGY MAKES HIS MOVE

Lewis packs a lot of action into this short novel and plenty of changes into her hero’s young life. Morgy has just moved from California to Massachusetts, where he gets lost on the way home after the first day of school, is repeatedly picked on by an older bully, finds out his mother is pregnant with twins, tries to learn to play hockey, and survives a chimney fire, a blizzard, and a blackout. In between trials, he makes new friends and writes to old ones, is visited by his aunt, and helps raise money for new equipment for the school playground. This lighthearted novel is filled with incident and warmth, nicely matched in tone by Chesworth’s black-and-white illustrations. Especially pleasing is the easy way the members of his family and his new friend Byron’s family come together during the storm, spend Thanksgiving together on the spur of the moment, and thereafter are naturally integrated into one another’s lives. (Fiction. 6-9)