MMGM- How To Fool Your Parents and Quagmire Tiarello Couldn't Be Better

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Unleashing Readers

Kwong, David and Korfhage, Michael (illus.) 

How to Fool Your Parents: 25 Brain-Breaking Magic Tricks

October 8, 2024 by HarperCollins

Copy provided by the publisher 

Magic tricks come and go in popularity, and I update my school collection from time to time, especially when the fantastic Carroll Baker performs at my school. How to Fool Your Parents, despite its nefarious title, is a good overview to get aspiring magicians up to speed on their magic skills. 

This starts with a glossary, which is a little unusual, but makes perfect sense; we need to know the terms when they are used in the directions. There are also tips about performance and putting on a show. There are three main types of tricks that are explained. Slight of Hand tricks involving a bit of subterfuge to hide and then reveal objects, like the playing card that needs to be baked into a cookie in advance of the trick. (I love that readers are instructed to ask for help from a parent for this one!) Technological trickery involves either cell phones or computers, and has an elaborate ruse for inventing an artificial intelligence mind reader call Hey Minerva. Mentalism involves fortune telling and mind reading, is the third, and there are a variety of tricks, some of which are simple enough to only involve a pen and piece of printer paper. The final section on covert communications has a good cross section of codes, ciphers, and signaling, as well as a recipe for invisible ink. 

The inclusion of short biographies of various magicians through history was fascinating; I didn't know that Doug Henning passed away years ago. There are some clever things, like including two pages of math doodles to use to throw parents off the scent and convince them that the reader is doing homework. Tips on how to modify or improve tricks are sprinkled throughout, and there's s running theme of making sure that parents don't get ahold of this book. 

I have to admit that I personally have no interest in magic tricks, so didn't try out any of these myself. There's clearly a need for more books on the topic, however; the Capstone Amazing Magic Tricks series that I "just bought" is fifteen years old. Nothing else has come across my desk recently, making this an excellent book to check out. Kwong's writing is engaging, and the assortment of tricks is great. His best trick might just be turning a degree in the history of the golden age of magic into a sustainable career. 

Larsen, Mylisa. Quagmire Tiarello Couldn't Be Better

September 17, 2024 by Clarion Books

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Quagmire (born Quentin; we do get an explanation!) should be glad that 8th grade  is out for the summer, but when his mother wakes him up early in the morning with a breakfast sandwich, his suspicions are confirmed; she is "spinning out" and entering an unpredictable manic mental state. It's bad enough that he has a "dumpster cam" on the pizza place near their apartment so he can get some dinner, but he's just had some positive interactions with his 8th grade crush, Cassie, and the idea of spending the summer seeing her at a YMCA theater camp, doing her sound effects for her radio style show sounds perfect. He tries to ignore the wanring signs, like finding the kitchen filled up with flowers from every yard in the neighborhood. He gets along well with the others in Cassie's group, Rhia, Jax, and Mikey, although he ends up being rather jealous of Mikey and putting in humorous sound effects to a serious play. Of course, Mikey, who tends to be very enthusiastic about everything, thinks that Quag's way is better, and asks him to do more. Just as things are going well with Cassie and the play, Quag's mother wants him to go with her on a road trip to get a hotdog. On the road, she spirals out very quickly, and things go from bad to worse. On the morning he is supposed to pick up doughnuts for the crew, he finds himself in Ohio with an increasingly erratic mother. After his mother falls into the water and hits her head, she drives off and leaves him. Luckily, Quag has grabbed her purse, and finds an uncle, Jay, listed in the contacts on her phone. Having no other options, he calls Jay, claiming that his mother wanted him to be picked up. He doesn't tell his uncle what is really going on. Jay quickly puts his nephew to work on the farm, along with Maggie, a slightly older girl who teaches him how to do farm work and to drive a truck. Quag appreciates that he doesn't have to deal with his mother, but is worried about her, and also misses Cassie and is sad that he left without saying goodbye. Quag gets to help a mare foal, rides in Maggie's gyroplane, and starts to feel that he really has to tell his uncle about his mother. They call the police, and when his mother shows up at the door, Jay helps file the paperwork to get his sister admitted to the hospital. When Jay mentions that Quag could start the school year in Nebraska, he hesitates a bit. When his mother calls and wants to check out and have Quag pick her up, he sets off to free his mother, but thinks better of this. Once he has his phone back, he has doughnuts Door Dashed to Cassie at camp, then calls and tells her what is going on. She and her aunt come to visit, giving Quagmire some closure as he embarks on a very different life. 

Strengths: Life isn't always great. There are a LOT of middle grade novels that center on the process of grieving various aspects of life, but that process can be a bit dull to read about. Surviving bad circumstances, however, is endlessly intriguing, which is why Warner's The Boxcar Children still has appeal 80 years after it was written, and why murder mysteries are so popular with adults. Quagmire has to step into the role of an adult to keep both himself and his mother functioning, but when his mother spirals out for the final time, he is unable to save her. Having a trusted adult finally give him some support comes as a relief both for him and for the reader. Changing circumstances entirely was a bit jarring, but was exactly what he needed. The fact that Quagmire is a rising ninth grader, and the fact that he gets to hang out with his crush, Cassie, makes this even more appealing. The humorous cover is a bonus as well. 

Weaknesses: It seemed a bit odd that Jay wouldn't ask more questions about his nephew being dropped off in the middle of nowhere. This had an interestingly disconnected feel to the narrative, but once I got used to it, I really enjoyed it, and it seemed very appropriate. 
What I really think: I enjoyed this one a lot. Middle grade readers do like a certain level of sadness in stories, if it is the sort that makes their own lives seem better by comparison. Like Choldenko's The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman, this showcases a resilient character who eventually gets the help he needs, which makes this an interesting read, with some touches of humor that reminded me of Petruck's Steering Toward Normal or Bullard's Turn Left at the Cow. This also addresses the effects that parental mental illness can have on children's lives that we've seen in Carr's Lost Kites or McDunn's These Unlucky Stars, Keller's The Science of Breakable Things, Pla's The Fire, the Water, and Maudie McGinn, Vaught's Footer Davis is Probably Crazy, or Melleby's Hurricane Season.