Kelsey Green, Reading Queen [Franklin School Friends]
by Claudia Mills; illus. by 
Rob Shepperson
Primary    Ferguson/Farrar    122 pp.
5/13    978-0-374-37485-3    $15.99    g
e-book ed.  978-0-374-37488-4    $9.99

Kelsey might be the reading queen of her third-grade class, but her throne is threatened when principal Mr. Boone announces a school-wide reading challenge: two thousand books read before April, and he’ll shave off his beard. What to do? Like every precocious reader who’s ever gamed a summer reading club, Kelsey puts down The Secret Garden for Sarah, Plain and Tall, and any other “short but age-appropriate book she could find.” First in a new series, the chapter book explores Mills’s favorite subject — everyday life with a side of ethical examination — to good effect as Kelsey discovers the difference between loving to read and loving to win. In a considerable plus, the book name-checks a number of easy-reader and chapter-book classics so that Kelsey’s enthusiasm can be passed right along. Frequent and aptly casual illustrations pace the narrative.

From the May/June 2013 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.