Customer Reviews

Parents' Night Fright (Invisible, Inc.)

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ISBN 0590603248 - Printed in the U.S.A. Marked for ages 7 to 9. Paperback, 44 pages. Part of the Invisible Inc. series; part of the Hello Reader! series. By Elizabeth Levy, illustrated by Denise Brunkus.

The members of Invisible Inc. have their work cut out for them when the story that Charlene wrote, and is expected to read aloud on Parents' Night, disappears. After a couple of false starts, they find the culprit and save the night.

I'm not really a fan of this story, mostly because it's SO "fast paced" that it seems to skip some of the niceties, so to speak, of good writing. Two children who are new students at Charlene's school are introduced in an almost passing fashion. Both then become suspects in the theft of Charlene's paper. This feels surprisingly mean-spirited, especially when no apology is offered, not even to the one who was actually confronted as a suspect. The amount of namecalling, mostly between Charlene and her brothers, feels authentic but is bound to bother some parents. Author Elizabeth Levy failed to impress, but illustrator Denise Brunkus did an excellent job. The target age group for this book is just about done with illustrated stories, but Brunkus's work has the appearance of Archie-comics style drawings, colorful and fun but still realistic - even with Chip, the invisible boy. I'd read more of the series, out of curiosity, and certainly recommend it to fans of the series, but wouldn't suggest it to anyone else.

- AnnaLovesBooks