Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Piper Green and the Fairy Tree: Too Much Good Luck
Illustrator: Qin Leng
Fiction Series
For ages 6 to 8
Random House, 2015 ISBN: 978-0553499308
One morning Piper Green has a massive dose of good luck. Her first piece of good luck is that her mother is painting Piper’s room lime green while Piper is school, and Piper is thrilled about this because she thinks lime green is “the best color.” The second piece of good luck is that Piper finds a perfect strawberry that morning. The third thing is that Mrs. Grindle brings cinnamon buns for Peek-a-boo Island’s school children that morning, and cinnamon buns are Piper’s “favorite treat.” Then, while Piper is eating her cinnamon bun, a fourth good luck event happens: one of her teeth falls out. How fantastic!
Piper’s friend Jacob warns Piper that she has had too much luck, and too much good luck “equals bad luck.” Piper thinks that Jacob is being superstitious, but when she gets to school she starts to think that maybe he was right. Piper’s teacher, Ms. Arabella, announces that the children are going to have a new girl in their class the next day, and since the new student is allergic to rabbits, the class’s pet rabbit, Nacho, is going to have to live elsewhere. All the children are very upset by this news. They love their rabbit and feel that it is “No fair!” that he is being taken away from them.
Piper decides that what she needs to do is to get the new girl, Camilla, to stop coming to their school so that Nacho can come back. Before school starts, Piper tells Camilla a few ‘stories’ about Ms. Arabella, saying that she is a wicked witch who likes to turn children into boiled eggs which she then eats. Soon after they get to their class, Camilla freaks out and runs away because she is convinced that Ms. Arabella is indeed a wicked witch. It is not long before Piper finds herself in the principal’s office. Maybe Jacob was right and there is such as a thing as too much good luck after all.
In this delightful book irrepressible Piper Green is back with her hopes and dreams, her adventures, and, inevitably, her misadventures. With wonderful touches of humor, Ellen Potter takes us to Piper’s little island home, and we see how important it is to give everyone a chance, no matter what our first impression of them might be.
