Review - JoJo and the Magic Trick

JoJo and the Magic Trick (Fancy Nancy)
by Jane O'Connor
illustrated by Rick Whipple
Date: 2017
Publisher: HarperCollins
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 32
Format: e-book
Source: library

Fancy Nancy's little sister, JoJo, stars in her My First I Can Read debut!

From bestselling author-illustrator team Jane O'Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser comes JoJo, Fancy Nancy's little sister. JoJo wants to do magic. She has both her magic wand and her magic cape ready to go. But how can she make flowers appear? Doing magic may not be as easy as she thought!

Beginning readers will be delighted by JoJo's can-do attitude in this My First I Can Read adventure--the perfect stepping stone to the Level 1 Fancy Nancy readers.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This simple picture book is about JoJo, Fancy Nancy's cute little sister. JoJo wants to do a magic trick. She has a cape (a towel) and a wand (a small stick), which seems like it should be enough. But she can't make the empty candy jar magically fill with flowers. So she upgrades her props and gets a better cape (a picnic tablecloth), a better wand (a giant stick), and a hat. Of course, as soon as I saw the big stick, I knew things weren't going to end well for that glass jar. But as JoJo's mother comforts her, the little girl comes up with an idea for a new magic trick, which she executes perfectly.

This is probably the sort of book that you'd read to your kids, rather than them reading it to themselves. (I'm not sure how old JoJo is supposed to be, but she looks quite young. I'd say she's between 2 and 4... and I'm guessing that's the audience for this book.) There aren't a lot of difficult words, though, so some little kids might be able to read this to themselves.

The illustrations, done in Robin Preiss Glasser's style, are really cute. (I don't know why the other illustrators aren't given credit with these books. Who's doing all the work?) JoJo is an adorable kid. She's not as fancy as Nancy (who makes a cameo in this book), but she's still an appealing character.

Quotable moment:

Premise: 3/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 3/5
Illustrations: 4/5
Originality: 3/5

Enjoyment: 4/5

Overall: 3.5 out of 5