Peggy Gifford.  Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little.  Photographs by Valorie Fisher.  Schwartz & Wade Books, 2007.  92 pages.  Age 7 to 11.

I loved Moxy Maxwell as soon as I met her—a girl with a bold name, and a title that blasphemes the inimitable E. B. White.  The chapter names demand a table of contents (though there is none…perhaps they weren’t demanding enough?)  They mostly follow to the “In which [something happens]” convention, though there are a number of variants, such as “[Something] explained” or “Regarding [something].”  It’s illustrated with photographs taken by Moxy’s twin brother, an amateur photographer whose reportedly “bad” photographs are rather brilliant.  The first sentence is short and a run-on.  It has an aside that addresses the reader as “Reader.”  Any of these factors on its own is stunning, but combining them all moves me beyond words.

[ A moment of silence. ]

I could list maybe ten more isolated reasons why this book is great.  Here are just five.  The book is prefaced by an apologetic author’s note, which is not worded apologetically (the gist of it is, “I’m the only one telling this story, deal with it.”)  There is a single-word chapter, contextualized by its six-word name.  Moxy is a list-maker.  There is a liberal use of unlikely Proper Nouns.  And an inordinate number of peaches are consumed.

Moxy ends up reading Stuart Little by the end of the book.  I might have prefaced that last sentence with “Spoiler alert!!!” but I’m feeling slightly devious.  And anyway, whether or not she’s reading the book is the main theme and source of dramatic tension, but actually seeing her read the book is, in itself, uninteresting.

With its mere 92 pages broken into short chapters and interspersed with photographs, you could make it work for reluctant readers.  And it’s about a reader who is experiencing some reluctance.  There’s poetry in that.

Quotable:

“Reader, can I describe the expression on Mrs. Maxwell’s face?  It traveled from Stunned to Puzzled and back.  It moved on from there to places Moxy had never visited before, places like Self-doubt and Despair.  It crossed into territories like Hopeless and Surrender, and on the way it passed very near Laughter.”  (p. 82)

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