When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement. Little Blue Truck keeps on truckin’-but not without some backfires. The illustrations, done by Joseph in the style of original series collaborator Jill McElmurry, are pleasant enough, but his compositions often feel stiff and forced. Schertle’s verse, usually reliable, stumbles more than once stanzas such as “But Valentine’s Day / didn’t seem much fun / when he didn’t get cards / from anyone” will cause hitches during read-alouds. In this, Blue’s seventh outing, it’s not just the sturdy protagonist that seems to be wilting. Blue is therefore surprised (but readers may not be) when he pulls into his garage to be greeted by all his friends with a shiny blue valentine just for him. But as Blue heads home, his deliveries complete, his headlight eyes are sad and his front bumper droops ever so slightly.
With each delivery there is an exchange of Beeps from Blue and the appropriate animal sounds from his friends, Blue’s Beeps always set in blue and the animal’s vocalization in a color that matches the card it receives. His bed overflowing with cards, Blue sets out to deliver a yellow card with purple polka dots and a shiny purple heart to Hen, one with a shiny fuchsia heart to Pig, a big, shiny, red heart-shaped card to Horse, and so on. Little Blue Truck feels, well, blue when he delivers valentine after valentine but receives nary a one. It all ends as a lesson in mother-knows-best, and the rest is like the silly TV show you hate yourself for laughing at. At the height of a company crisis mother switches back (just how is never explained) and the family sits down to a meal prepared by dreamboat Boris from upstairs - only as Boris has a nose cold (really an allergy to his mother), what is announced as Boris's meatloaf turns out to be Morris's beetloaf. The scenes get wilder as Annabel-as-mother fires the bigoted cleaning woman, confers with Annabel's teachers about her outrageous behavior, and calls the police to help locate the son/little brother she's misplaced. Rodgers mercifully ignores, this becomes a conventional situation comedy in which 13-year-old Annabel, whose mother has switched "bods" to teach her a lesson, tries unsuccessfully to cope with cooking, laundry, budgeting, and all that. I had on my mother's nightgown and a ring on my left hand." But once past the alarming Oedipal implications, which Ms.
with my father sleeping in the other bed. Gregor Samsa's "Metamorphosis" to insect form is no more disconcerting than the opening of Freaky Friday: "When I woke up this morning, I found I'd turned into my mother.
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