FOUR STUPID CUPIDS

Having faced ghosts, aliens, and deadly Siberian snow spiders in previous adventures, the fifth graders at Josiah Fawcett Elementary take on a very different sort of challenge when a Grecian urn from Fawn Petros’s aunt shatters, releasing four bright-eyed cupids from a 2,300-year nap. Naturally, the students immediately hatch a plot to hook up their television-despising teacher Miss Earth, still grieving over her lost love, Rocco Tortoni, with someone, anyone—how about TV newscaster Chad Hunkley? Unfortunately, the obliging cupids are a bit rusty with bow and arrow. Maguire gives shy, underachieving Fawn several chances to shine as he piles sidesplitting complications atop the customary stresses of Valentine’s Day (“What if nobody sends me a card? What if somebody does send me a card? . . . A certain variety of panic clutched many sets of guts”). By the end, seeming none the worse for having fallen madly in love with the school janitor, then a balloon in the shape of cartoon personality Cap’n Trueheart, the class frog, and finally television, Miss Earth sports a small ring, perhaps from previously diffident suitor Timothy Hay, the town’s young mayor. With profound relief, the students mail the cupids back to Greece. “Midsummer Night’s Dream” this is not, but rarely have the arrows of love gone more hilariously astray. (Fiction. 10-12)