Penelope Crumb (review)

When her best friend draws her portrait in art class, fourth-grader Penelope Crumb discovers for the first time that she has a big nose. After consulting her mother, she learns that she has inherited the "Crumb nose" from her grandfather, who abandoned the family when his son, Penelope's father, became sick with his ultimately fatal illness. A class assignment about becoming a family history detective gives Penelope just the inspiration she needs to track down her missing grandfather. With the help of her eleven-year-old neighbor, Penelope manages to find her grandfather, a retired photographer who at first isn't sure he wants to be found, but eventually there are hopeful signs of rapprochement. Penelope is an intrepid heroine with a unique and frequently amusing narrative voice (while drawing a portrait of her best friend, she muses: "Her eyebrow is like a furry caterpillar that might curl up in the palm of my hand. It is so cute, I name it. Marge"). Her longing for a connection to her dad's family is poignantly believable, and her relationship with her teenaged brother (whose transformation into prickly teenager she blames on an alien abduction) is also both credible and humorous. This would be a natural tie-in with a unit on family history or a satisfying readaloud selection, and kids who have outgrown the Junie B. Jones series will enjoy Penelope's equally comical narrative style. Final art not seen.