Danny's Doodles: The Jellybean Experiment by David A. Adler (review)

The new kid in Danny's class, Calvin Waffle, is friendly enough, but he's a little weird: he's asked Danny to keep a massive bag of jellybeans in his pockets for a week as part of an unexplained experiment. When Calvin invites Danny and some classmates to his house for a homework party, he reveals that his experiment was designed to see if smelling like jellybeans would make Danny more popular (it worked), and the group discovers that Calvin's actually a really perceptive and kind-hearted guy in spite of his quirks. Adler adds some depth to the befriend-the-new-kid story with inventive phrasing, humorous characterization, and a gentle backstory about Calvin's absent father. Although some more complex vocabulary might push this toward stronger readers or reading aloud, moderately oversized text and manageable, chunky chapters enhance readability, and the doodles that lend this series its name pepper the text in the form of cleverly captioned squiggles and stick figures. Danny and Calvin are classic non-superhero chapter book protagonists, and they're remarkably easy to relate to; the factual information about experimentation might also make this an interesting literature complement to a classroom study of the scientific method.