MAKE LIKE A TREE AND LEAVE

Matthew Martin is back—in a rather disappointing follow-up to Everyone Else's Parents Said Yes (1989). After an introductory episode about making a mummy for a class project (with predictably disastrous results), the most prominent story element here involves Matthew's class's efforts to raise money to save the land of their muchloved school visitor, Mrs. Nichols, which she might have to sell to pay medical bills. Danziger's wit is often on target, and she continues to have a precise ear for the pungencies of grade-school humor; but her habit of switching points of view to comment on the action, while sometimes amusing, more often seems arch. In sum, a series of funny episodes that don't really coalesce but are still very entertaining.