I just can’t keep away from fan fiction, I guess.
One of my current jobs puts me in close proximity to a lot of children’s literature, and because I’m busy working two jobs and finishing a degree, I don’t have a lot of time for recreational reading, so it’s a lot easier for me to pick up a chapterbook, which any adult can read in half an hour or less, than to read something more involved. For those of you not in the know, a chapterbook is an illustrated novelette for kids who have graduated from picture books but aren’t quite ready to go full novel.
Never go full novel.
Thus, I have been exploring kid lit. For whatever reason, a lot of books for transitional readers are basically character studies of young girls, some of them surprisingly skillful in execution. Naturally, my first thought on reading these stories is that some of these characters would make great magical girls.
Of the kids’ books I’ve looked at recently, my favorite is Fancy Nancy. This franchise started in 2006 with a picture book by Jane O’Connor with whimsical and colorful illustrations by Robin Preiss Glasser. The book was a hit, and it sat on the New York Times bestseller list for ten weeks. The titular heroine is a plump, wiggly, and indefatigably upbeat little rascal who is obsessed with all things fancy, especially beautiful clothes and big words. Narrating in first-person, she delivers vocabulary lessons in the form of “fancy words,” which she both defines and uses in context. Her loving family doesn’t share her obsession, but humors her anyway. A typical plot involves Nancy hoping for something lavish and being disappointed, but learning to make the best of it anyway, because fanciness is more about attitude than about wardrobe. The franchise now contains around eighty titles, including additional picture books, transitional readers by other authors and illustrators, two off-Broadway musicals, and a set of chapterbooks featuring a Nancy who is slightly older—and, unfortunately, slightly less charming. It’s the older Nancy I have attempted to adapt in The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers.
My second favorite is the Ivy + Bean series by Annie Barrows, which are especially well-written for chapterbooks. Although of recent vintage, they have a decidedly nostalgic feel to them: the protagonists are a couple of rambunctious second-graders who become besties and proceed to get up to mostly harmless shenanigans, pulling pranks in their timeless, Ray-Bradburyesque suburban neighborhood. These books hearken back to a day when kids spent their time running around and getting their exercise and making trouble instead of sitting in front of screens. My favorite is No News Is Good News, in which Ivy and Bean have to find a creative way to raise enough money to buy lowfat Belladoona cheese in a just-for-you serving size because they want to play with the wax it’s coated with.
Also perennially popular, and also subject of a massive franchise even including a major motion picture, is Judy Moody by Megan McDonald. I think the Judy Moody books are overrated, but they’re nonetheless entertaining. As her last name suggests, the third-grade heroine of these books is famously grouchy. She has typical kid adventures, such as solving mysteries or trying to decide if she’s psychic, while trying to control her temper. These are easily the preachiest of any of the books I use here, but they’re never heavy-handed enough to override the entertainment factor. The Judy Moody books are written in their own signature brand of Buffy Speak, which is surprisingly hard to imitate.
… But not nearly as hard to imitate as Junie B. Jones by the late Barbara Park, a series written in an invented dialect that resembles the way a small child might talk if stuffed full of sugar and allowed to babble at length. Although an attentive reader will notice that a few of the jokes hint that an adult is behind the composition, the books are for the most part convincing as a child’s narration, loaded with grammatical errors, malapropisms, and weird turns of phrase. They’re also hilarious. Park’s philosophy of writing emphasized humor over moralizing, so Junie B. is allowed to be a complete brat as long as it stays funny.
The Cam Jansen series by David A. Adler is a longstanding staple of transitional readers. Cam is a fifth-grader with a photographic memory (of the picture-perfect variety that doesn’t exist in real life), who uses her unusually formidable mind to solve mysteries. To help struggling young readers, the series is written in an unadorned, staccato style with no flourishes to speak of. To the adult reader, this lends the impression that Cam has a somewhat stoical personality, which I’ve chosen to make explicit.
Amelia Bedelia is also a longstanding favorite, the heroine of which is a chipper maid who has a curious and unexplained inability to understand figurative speech or distinguish between homophones, an inability that typically leads to madcap mayhem. Originally created by the late Peggy Parish, the franchise is now in the hands of her nephew Herman Parish. Herman Parish has continued writing books similar to his aunt’s, but has also expanded the franchise by creating a series of chapterbooks about Amelia as a child. His Amelia Bedelia chapterbooks are among the best-written works on this list—though they do not, I think, read very much like Amelia Bedelia stories, as their plots are typically driven by factors other than Amelia’s linguistic disability. There is speculation on the Internet that Amelia Bedelia suffers some form of autism, though that is probably not the Parishes’ intent.
Pinkalicious is a series of picture books by Victoria Kann. I’m not sure what the big deal is, but they’re hugely popular. They take place in a world that might have been imagined by Hieronymus Bosch if Bosch had access to Prozac. And pink frosting. The curiously named titular heroine loves all things pink, especially pink cupcakes, which she once ate so many of that she turned pink. She appears to have some magical powers and has a pet unicorn that may or may not be imaginary. Her little brother Peter once built a space elevator out of toy blocks. There’s a planned television series that is supposed to begin sometime this year. Also, her parents deserve, at least, a good talking-to for naming their daughter “Pinkalicious.” That’s probably why she turned evil.
Additional note on hair colors: It is canonical that Cam Jansen and Judy Moody are redheads. Amelia Bedelia’s hair color varies somewhat from one illustrator to another, but she is generally regarded as a redhead by fans. Junie B. Jones’s hair color is not mentioned in her books, but color illustrations consistently represent her with chestnut hair. The first Fancy Nancy picture book indicates that Nancy is a brunette, but that her hair looks the way it does because she fills it with purple mousse. However, in subsequent volumes, the brown and purple streaks drop from her hair and orange and yellow take over, and the colors remains consistent even in scenes where she should, presumably, have no mousse in—so she seems to have been retconned into a redhead. In this, she is like the famous heroine she somewhat resembles, Little Orphan Annie, who was blond in the earliest strips but became a redhead after a few years.
