April Fool! (Easy-to-Read, Puffin) - Softcover

Grade 1-2-This beginning reader is a big disappointment. Will, a young skateboarder, tells a crowd of increasingly skeptical friends a meaningless and contrived story of an elephant's antics. At times, this tale in verse seems to have been written more to complete a rhyme than to make sense or move the story along: "He raced with a bus/that was going to town./He put back a flagpole/that had fallen down." The illustrations of the anthropomorphized elephant are also inconsistent. In most, his hind legs are drawn to scale, but in others they are much longer. While the use of double-page spreads to convey the sheer mass of the animal is effective, and the cartoons and the skateboarding narrator have some appeal, the nonsensical text won't fool anyone.
Diane Janoff, Queens Library, CLASP Office, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

On the way to school one morning, Will regales his friends with a tall tale about an adventurous, acrobatic elephant he once saw along the same route. As the absurd story goes on, the children begin to suspect that something's up and finally join in the chant, "Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!" Will nonchalantly replies, "April Fool!" Jaunty ink drawings tinted with bright washes give this Viking Easy-to-Read title a cheerful look as they illustrate both the story and the story-within-the-story. Upbeat fare for beginning readers and a possible read-aloud choice for younger children on April Fool's Day. Carolyn Phelan