Ling & Ting: Twice as Silly
by Grace Lin; illus. by the author
Primary   Little, Brown   44 pp.
11/14   978-0-316-18402-1   $16.00

Lin’s third Ling and Ting easy reader (Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same, rev. 7/10; Ling & Ting Share a Birthday, rev. 9/13) is certainly a silly one, with each of the six stories concluding on a wonderfully goofy note perfectly attuned to early readers’ developing sense of wordplay. In the first chapter, pragmatic Ling encourages outside-the-box thinker Ting to try planting seeds when the cupcakes she plants fail to grow. “‘Are beans seeds?’ Ting asks. ‘Yes,’ Ling says. ‘Beans are seeds.’ ‘Good,’ Ting says. ‘Then next I will plant jelly beans.’” In the second story, Ling asks Ting to paint her toys red. “Paint everything.” When she returns to find messy Ting covered with paint, Ling laughs and says, “I said ‘Paint everything’! I did not say ‘Paint everyTING’!” As in the previous books, each chapter features a different pastel-color background, helping new readers transition from story to story; brightly colored borders surround each illustration, with the straight-edged frames fittingly morphing into bubble-shapes for scenes that take place in the girls’ imaginations. Lin’s terrific twins are double the fun in this affectionately daffy addition to the series.

From the January/February 2015 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.