Synopsis
"I won't share 'cuz it's not fair!" is nine-year-old Isabella Speedwalker-Juarez's motto. It's all because she's stuck in a room with her toddler brother, Dozer. Mom says Izzy has to adapt to Granny's tiny trailer, where they've just moved because money is tight and Mom is worried about losing her job at the gum factory. Izzy knows what will make everything better - an above-ground pool. She'll swim in it for hours, and she won't share it with anyone, not even her new classmates or her friend Deborah Nibblebitz-Fifer. With help from Zachary O'Toole, the neighborhood handyman - and from Deborah - Izzy plans to hold a car wash to raise money. But when things finally start to go her way, a tornado damages the neighborhood, and Izzy begins to rethink her motto.
Sparkling illustrations and a large dose of warmhearted humor make Isabella's dilemma - and change of heart - easily identifiable to young readers everywhere.
Children's Literature
Isabelle, her mother, and three-year-old little brother have downsized to Grandma's trailer because her mom's hours at the Texas chewing gum factory have been cut back. Cramped in a too-small bedroom, Isabelle decides on a new motto: "I won't share cuz it's not fair." Making friends in her new neighborhood and third grade classroom is not easy with this attitude either. But she and her mother have been saving on layaway for an above-ground pool and are only $200 short. That will be the whole solution, thinks Isabelle. A place where she can be alone and cool. However, a tornado travels through town and demolishes the fix-it shop where Isabelle has made friends with Zeke the proprietor. And, worse, the tornado has torn off the roof of a classmate's bedroom. So she decides the carwash proceeds she was going to use to pay off the pool can go to her classmate to replace some of his toys. But what about the pool? Small subplots about inventing a bubble gum flavor and sharing the role of kickball pitcher in the big game with the fourth grade contribute to the satisfying ending in which a pool and the joys of sharing occur to Isabelle. Cocca-Leffler's pleasantly quirky ink wash illustrations suit the slightly humorous touch of giving characters silly names: Ramsbottom, Wigglesworth, Speedwalker-Juarez, Nibblebitz-Fifer, and so forth, but otherwise the story reads like a true-life easy chapter book for second and third graders.