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Stella Batts Needs A New Name (2012)

by Courtney Sheinmel(Favorite Author)

3.82 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1585361852 (ISBN13: 9781585361854)

languge

English

genre

Humor

publisher

Sleeping Bear Press

review 1: This book was a sweet read, and not just because it is about a grade three girl with parents who own a candy store (!). I thought it was a lovely concept but couldn't convince my normally candy-store loving 10-year old to give it a try. I guess it might be due to the young look of the girl on the cover? Really, from a library perspective that is perfectly fine because it would be a great choice for a young reader who has reading skills that go beyond Jack & Annie and their magic treehouse and need 'something else' . This is a series with real meat on it - mature friendships and worries that a girl in grade three or four would find reasonably interesting but not sooo scary that a younger reader would have trouble connecting with. It's very cute and there are illustrati... moreons throughout that make it a bit less daunting as it does measure 150 pages.In this first book Courtney Sheinmel has Stella frustrated that a boy in her class has assigned her a particularly mean nickname, "Smella", and wants to change her name to something that can't be adjusted in this way. Her friends all agree that they also dislike their names and as the story unfolds we have Stella and her friends choosing candy-related names in a small tribute to their favourite candy store. Along with this drama Stella has a little sister who bugs her and her mother is pregnant with a second sibling so it looks like the Stella series is filled with fantastic stories to come. Her parents are an intact family unit but there is enough difference in their parenting style to set up some drama opportunities for further books. I liked this book enough to read parts of it aloud to the kids over the weekend because Courtney Sheinmel seems to have a good handle on what is funny for kids. There really is enough going on in this book to make it entertaining for an older kid but not so mature to spoil it for someone in grade one. It doesn't, unfortunately, have enough excitement to swing a read by my 10-year old and that kind of breaks my heart but... there are lots of other books for us to love together. And, she keeps reminding me that the Divergent movie is out in 2 weeks so maybe it's time to face facts that candy-store owning families aren't all that she is interested in any longer. Guess I'll go make a huge cup of tea now.
review 2: A new middle grade reader series published by Sleeping Bear Press. (Don't know anything about the author, so I will do some investigating!) I actually would give it 3.5-3.8 rating, so I rounded up. I liked it. I liked the character--Stella. I like that she wants to be a writer. I like how she introduces the reader to writing concepts and terminology. I think the plot was pretty good. I need to read the next one to get a little more feel for this series. More to follow! less

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