Piper Reed, Navy Brat (review)

Spunky, sarcastic fourth-grader Piper Reed is a service kid, and she has already lived in San Diego, Texas, Guam, Mississippi, and New Hampshire. Now her father's assignment to a base in Pensacola, Florida, means the family must move again. Like her two sisters (melodramatic Tori, older sister, and Sam the prodigy, younger sister), Piper has mixed feelings about this move: the family has never before moved in the middle of a school year, and she is sad to leave her group of friends, the Gypsy Club, and Kip, the German shepherd who lives next door. In Piper, Holt introduces a likable new series protagonist; Piper is full of energy and ideas that serve to both help and hamper her as she gets settled into her new life in Florida. This first entry focuses on the cross-country move and the family's first days in their new, much smaller townhouse, concluding by seeing Piper and her siblings through their start at a new school. The relationships among the three siblings are believably portrayed, with the girls complaining about one another and yet, in a pinch, supporting one another. Davenier's energetic monochromatic line-and-watercolor illustrations have a lively, informal fluidity well suited to the bouncy characters. Expect this to circulate well among middle-graders with a penchant for entertaining, witty protagonists.