Sophie the Chatterbox

Children's Literature - Jeannine Stickle

Sophie is a third-grader on a quest for a new name and a new identity to match. In the previous two books in the series, she has tried out the names "Sophie the Awesome" and "Sophie the Hero," and this time she has decided to try "Sophie the Honest." But in Sophie's opinion, honesty means volunteering everything she knows on a topic whenever the opportunity arises, and she soon earns herself the name "Sophie the Chatterbox" instead. When she tells some friends that they were not invited to a sleepover party hosted by their mutual friend Kate, Kate gets angry and decides she does not want to be friends with Sophie anymore. The friends are reunited when Sophie apologizes after deciding that it is not worth losing friends in the effort to be honest. Disappointingly, Sophie does not learn that real honesty does not mean sharing all available information at every opportunity or realize that this is the reason she has been labeled a "chatterbox," though the lesson will probably come across to most readers anyway. Sophie is a likeable, but she is not nearly as compelling as many other third-grade heroines such as Clementine or Judy Moody and elementary-school-aged girls should turn to Sophie only when they have already read those other series. Reviewer: Jeannine Stickle