159. Mercy Watson Something Wonky This Way Comes

Mercy Watson: Something Wonky This Way Comes by Kate DiCamillo
Illustrated by Chris Van Dusen
Mercy Watson, Book #6

Pages: 86
Ages: 6+
Finished: Aug. 31, 2009
First Published: Jul. 14, 2009
Genre: children, humour
Rating: 3.5/5

First sentence:

Mr. Watson and Mrs. Watson have a pig named Mercy.

Reason for Reading: Next and newest (2009) in the series. I received a review copy from Random House Canada.

Comments: The Watsons are off to the Drive-in to watch a movie but Mercy is more concerned about the strong smell wafting about. Butter! Her favourite smell because where there is butter there is often toast. So she quietly slips out of the car and walks through the drive-in putting her snout in everyone's popcorn and while it is deliciously buttery she is looking for the ultimate taste of buttered toast. Unfortunately for Mercy both Officer Tommilello (and wife) and Animal Control Officer Francine Poulet (and date) are taking in a movie that night as well. And thus we have another fun adventure of Mercy and the cast from previous books.

Another cute story about Mercy as we've come to expect. There are some really good laugh out loud moments in this book. A handful of new characters, one with a name that, for the life of me, I couldn't wrap my tongue around without trying two or three times! Along with the few new characters every single character ever introduced in the series is found within this story and the usual toast party at the end has them all. If you've read all the books in the series you can try and name them all as we did! This book does have a feeling of being the last in the series. First with all the characters gathered together, it seems impossible for the author to continue the tradition since she has a nice fine large cast as it stands now. Second the last several pages speak of happy endings, while this pertains to the story I had a feeling this was also a way of wrapping up the series. Finally, this last book is at a higher reading level than the previous books, it is longer at 86 pgs, there are whole two page spreads without pictures found throughout the book (which never occurred in previous volumes) as if pointing the child in the direction of moving onwards with their reading abilities. (Of course, I have no insider info. This is just my humble opinion.)

Another fine entry, though not our favourite, in the Mercy Watson series, which is perfect reading for kids who are at the age where they can read but are not ready to move away from large print or still want to have colourful pictures. While there is no need to read the books in order, there is a benefit. One being that #6 here is a higher reading level than the others but more importantly starting with #1 new characters are introduced with each book and occasionally reappear until the final few books where we have every old character making appearances and it's just a whole lot of fun to see them showing up again this way. If read out of order, you'd miss this fun.

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