KIRKUS REVIEW
First her best friend moves away and then the school system excludes third graders from the science fair competition. For third grader and budding scientist Bernadette Inez O’Brian Schwartz, this promises to be the worst school year ever. Bernadette is an original—imaginative, organized, moody, but resourceful. Slowly, she makes new friends, a Lunch Bunch with whom she can share strategies for making lunch at school interesting. She has a pirate party, comes to terms with being nothing more than one of the audience for the Talent Show, concocts a project that makes her sad friend Megan smile and circumvents the science fair decision. Poet and literary critic Glickman’s first novel for children realistically captures elementary school life with sympathy and humor. Allard’s occasional line drawings show a diverse cast of characters and add to the appeal of this substantial chapter book first published in Canada in 2008. (Fiction. 7-9)
