WILLIMENA AND THE COOKIE MONEY

Willie is a seven-year-old African-American girl with a big problem as she heads into summer vacation: she spent $20 of her Girl Scout cookie sales money and now it’s time to turn in the cash. (She spent the funds on school lunches for two neighbor girls who weren’t getting enough to eat.) Willie and her big sister stop their tedious bickering just long enough to try to solve the problem with a lemonade stand and a pet show with an admission fee, but both schemes fail to raise much cash (or much interest from the reader). Finally, Willie confesses to her parents; they pay back the money from Willie’s savings account; and they try to get some help for the poorly fed neighbor girls. Wesley (Freedom Gifts, 1997, etc.) includes too many inane arguments, too many characters, too much description, and not enough dialogue and action to keep kids reading. There are so many neighborhood characters that Willie herself never really comes alive, leading to a stale story without the sweetening of successful humor or the snap of a crisp plot. (That’s the way the cookie crumbles.) (Fiction. 7-10)