[LISTENED TO: June 29, 2016] No Girls Allowed (Dogs Okay)
Scab McNally is a clever fourth-grade kid who is always inventing things. But he’s also kind of selfish and pretty mean to his sister. Isabelle is his twin but because she really uses her brain (She is smart times ten) she has been bumped up from 4th grade to 5th grade.
Isabelle doesn’t understand Scab’s brand of cleverness (and mischievousness) and so she writes a daily news report about all of the things that Scab has done to her (and done at school) through the day. She reads this to her parents every night. It’s pretty hard for Scab to catch a break at this point.
But obviously, the more Isabelle tells on him the more things he does to her. He puts cheese in her underwear drawer and dead bugs in her room.
This is all some background to the fact that more than anything else Scab wants a dog. (There seem to be a lot of books about kids who desperately want a dog). Scab’s best friend has a dog, Oscar–a wiener dog. And Scab is super jealous but always happy to help out with Oscar. Of course, since Isabelle is always attaining on him, his parents don’t think he is responsible to own a dog.
These plots merge when Scab comes up with a new invention–a horrifically smelly spray that is designed to keep sisters out of your room. There’s s secret ingredient that Oscar helps with (for the love of God, please tell me that his mom bought a new blender). And the smell becomes so powerful when other kids get a whiff of it, they want to buy some.
He calls it Isabelle’s Smell and sells it for $3 a pop. Pretty sweet.
But several things come up to cause this genius ideal to falter somewhat. First off since his friend has been helping him, he wants a cut of the money. Scab is totally reluctant to share (even my kids realized that) even though he couldn’t have done it himself. Oh and then there’s a matter of the name. Surely he must have realized that somehow it might get back to Isabelle. If you thought Isabelle’s news reports were bad before….
Although I enjoyed the book, I actually found Isabelle’s story to be more compelling than Scab’s. Isabelle is having a hard time adjusting to being in a new grade. Her old friends are dismissive of her and the 5th graders are suspicious of her. It’s sad days for Isabelle and I wanted to hear more about her than a boy who wants to make smelly spray.
At the same time, the Scab story was pretty funny (including how he gets his own name and some of his of his other inventions). And I did appreciate that even though he and Isabelle are more or less enemies, he was able to see that his actions were pretty painful to her.
It’s a cute (disgusting) story with some decent humor. It’s also the first in a series (so far of 3). I don’t know if we’ll listen to any more. But it’s nice to have options for short books.
Oliver Wyman read this and we enjoyed him quite a bit. He had some good distinctive voices for the characters. I particularly enjoyed when Isabelle screams Scaaaaaaab.
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