What Planet Are You From, Clarice Bean? - Hardcover

Child, Lauren

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0763616966 ISBN 13: 9780763616960

Publisher: Candlewick, 2002

Synopsis

Clarice Bean needs a science project or she's in BIG trouble. Her brother Kurt just wants to save the planet. And now they're both up a tree.

"Sometimes I think gravity is a pity," says Clarice Bean, who is learning all about planet Earth in school. When Mrs. Wilberton assigns a project called The Environment, Clarice’s ever-active brain leaps to the holes in the sky caused by her sister’s hairspray, and to the nature safari that’s in her brother’s bedroom. But when she learns that a big tree right on Navarino Street is about to be chopped to pieces, Clarice has no choice but to join her quirky family up in the tree’s branches, eat spaghetti, and save the day.

In a welcome new installment in the Clarice Bean escapades, Lauren Child makes a clear case for ecoaction - and gives the cause of saving the planet a hilarious new spin.

About this title

Review:

While learning about the environment and planet Earth ("Sometimes I think gravity is a pity") Clarice Bean winds up with Robert Granger ("I mainly like to ignore him"), as her class partner. Robert wants to do a project on who walks faster, a snail or a worm, but Clarice Bean finds this topic exceedingly boring. Besides, there's something a lot more interesting going on at home. Brother Kurt has become an ecowarrior, which involves sitting in a doomed-to-be-felled tree, waving signs that say "Free the Tree ("because it rhymes"), and sometimes perching together with the whole family, eating spaghetti marinara.

Award-winning author-illustrator Lauren Child's by-now familiar, zany style (Clarice Bean, That's Me, Clarice Bean, Guess Who's Babysitting?) features collage illustrations with scribbly drawings and real photos, and fonts gone mad: big, little, upside-down, spiraling, sideways... whatever the text calls for, no holds barred. This Eloise of the 21st century is as weirdly appealing as any eccentric child you're likely to come across, reading comic books "with the T-shirts and undies in the laundry room." (Ages 6 to 10) --Emilie Coulter

About the Author:

Lauren Child describes her spunky character Clarice Bean as "a sort of mishmash of lots of different children and lots of childhood memories." Of WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM, CLARICE BEAN?, she says, "Clarice is giving us her kooky but serious take on the environment, something many children learn about in school. It’s such a universal topic that I wanted to write about it, but not in a moralizing or preachy way." Lauren Child is also the author of I AM NOT SLEEPY AND I WILL NOT GO TO BED and the Kate Greenaway Medal-winning I WILL NEVER NOT EVER EAT A TOMATO. The daughter of two teachers, Lauren Child lives in London, England.

About this edition

• Publisher: Candlewick
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0763616966
• ISBN 13: 9780763616960
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Child Lauren