THE QUIGLEYS NOT FOR SALE
by Simon Mason & illustrated by Helen Stephens
Mr. and Mrs. Quigley and their children, Will and Lucy, have managed to stay alive for another installment of their exciting and entertaining lives. With a flat, understated reporting style, Mason makes these silly, nearly tall-tale experiences seem normal. From a stay at a hotel, to Will and Lucy’s earnest attempt to help out in a financial crisis, to a Mother’s Day walk, and the selling of the family cottage, four seemingly average moments in family life become extraordinary. Will regales the entire fancy hotel restaurant with what he learned at school (the dangers of train tracks, complete with steaming amputated stumps and graphic details of cholera in Victorian England) and it’s hard to know whether to laugh or blush. But it’s all in hilarious good fun. Perfect for the new chapter-book reader with a skewed sense of humor and for the adults who read aloud to them. (Fiction. 7-12)