Peachaloo in Bloom
by Chris Raschka; illus. by the author
Intermediate    Porter/Holiday    304 pp.
7/25    9780823458554    $18.99

Twelve-year-old Peachaloo Piccolozampa is staying with her beloved grandmother Omi in small-town Pennsylvania for the summer, as usual. This year their idyllic life, characterized by early-morning swims in the local pond, is threatened by villainous real estate developer Major Gasbag. (Gasbag speaks exclusively in hyperbole; timely parallel noted.) The story (which has a mysterious first-person narrator, eventually revealed) continues in this satirical vein as Peachaloo and Omi attempt to resist Gasbag’s machinations. Entwining with this plot line is a historical story of two 1930s bank robbers who experienced a conversion from their life of crime due to an encounter with a local religious sect, a society that treated skipping as a spiritual practice. (The use of skipping as a form of social protest may be a sweet nod to Eleanor Farjeon’s classic, Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep.) Peachaloo stars in the town’s annual play devoted to this inspiring event. It all adds up to a rollicking, digressive, and (unsurprisingly given Raschka’s work as an illustrator) highly visually descriptive novel. “Ship-like clouds were burnt a fiery scarlet on their undersides, with their fluffy topsides going lilac.” In a dramatic conclusion, Gasbag is ejected from paradise, Peachaloo gains confidence, and order is restored in proper comic fashion.

From the July/August 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.