ALA Notable Children's Book, Editor's Choice, Best Books of 2007 (2007)
Best Children's Book (2006)
Best New Book for the Classroom (2006)

I really enjoyed the humor in this book, and Ivy and Bean's inventive, snarky personalities. Children will definitely be enthralled by this series and may be inspired by the girls' wacky hijinks (though hopefully not too inspired).

One of the best in the series so far! The girls need to earn money for some cheese they want, specifically, "Lowfat Belldeloon cheese in a special just-for-you serving size". They don't want it for the cheese, they want it for the red wax! To earn the money, the create a newspaper for their neighborhood and in the process, get into a bit of mischief! A cute adventure and a great project idea for kids! ( )

This was an entertaining read, and I think most kids would agree. The storyline of these books seems like it would have mass appeal to children beginning to read, so would be good for the classroom. I appreciated that there are two protagonists--both girls--and that their characters don't submit to the stereotypical "female" roles often seen in our culture.

Determined to get their hands on some lowfat Belldeloon cheese in a special just-for-you serving size - not because they like the cheese itself, but because the red wax in which it is packaged makes for excellent play material - second-graders and best friends Ivy and Bean set out to earn the money necessary. At the suggestion of Bean's father, the two girls decide to sell subscriptions to a local newspaper that they will (they claim) be producing, with all the news from their street, Pancake Court. When they discover that they actually have to produce the paper, they are somewhat dismayed, until they discover how much fun it is to snoop around, and peer in their neighbors' windows. But will the first edition of The Flip(p)ing Pancake, with its sensational stories about the neighbors, bring them fame and fortune, or universal opprobrium...?

I can't say that this eighth and thus-far final installment of Annie Barrows and Sophie Blackall's series of chapter-books chronicling the adventures of second-grade best friends Ivy and Bean - there is a ninth due out, later this year, provisionally entitled Ivy + Bean Make the Rules - is one of my favorites. In fact, it probably ties with Ivy + Bean Take Care of the Babysitter as my least favorite of the collection - and for the same reasons. There is a fine line between transgressive humor and outright nastiness, and while I am far from arguing that that line is in the same place for every reader, this story crossed it, as far as I am concerned. Kids can sometimes be whiny and entitled, as Bean and Ivy are, when trying to convince their parents to buy them the cheese, and they can also be heedless. But when these two sell subscriptions, deliberately intending never to produce the product they're selling, I have a hard time believing that they aren't perfectly aware that they're being dishonest. I certainly would have been well aware of that, at their age! Likewise, I don't buy that it would not have occurred to them that printing nasty things about their neighbors in a newspaper might be questionable - especially when those nasty things are rather... unsubstantiated.

Kids aren't angels, and I'm all for stories that acknowledge that fact - especially stories that upend the old "sugar and spice" nonsense, about little girls - but I couldn't really see the humor here. Not good. Not good at all. I hope the next one improves... ( )