Clarice Bean Don’t Look Now

Clarice Bean Don’t Look Now (Clarice Bean #3)

Lauren Child

Candlewick, 2007

$15.99, Hardcover

978-0763635367

March 11^th, 2012

Genre: Realistic, Humor

Age: 7+

Description: Clarice Bean is back! This time she’s armed with the Ruby Redfort Survival Handbook and the Ruby Redfort Spy Guide. She’s also learning a lot about worries, including the dreaded worry you don’t even realize you had to worry about! When Betty Moody returns from vacation without her mother, Clarice thinks Betty is acting weird because of such a dread worry—her parents must be getting a divorce! In actuality, Betty’s mother has been offered a job in California! Now Clarice has to worry about losing her best friend. When Clarice’s house starts to fall apart she fears she might be the one moving and it turns out to be the opposite when Betty’s mom accepts the job. Soon with all the fighting her parents are doing over the house, Clarice begins to worry if it isn’t her parents who will end up divorced. The story follows Clarice as a new Swedish girl, Clem, takes Betty’s spot in class and Clarice uses her handbooks to discover that Clem hangs out with Justin, the school bully. It takes her a while to realize how wrong she’s been about everyone around her when she realizes just why Clem and Justin are attached at the hip. Soon all is well as Clem soon begins to lessen the loss of Betty and Betty makes a new friend as well.

Opinion: Clarice is back with her made up words and silly sentence structure this time in a book all about worries and some of them are pretty big—moving, parents splitting up, having to make new friends. Clarice’s feelings are very real and relatable and her handling of the situation totally understandable for a young girl who misunderstands things.