BRAVO, MAX!

Continuing the exchange of notes and postcards begun in Dear Max (2006), renowned children’s author D.J. Lucas and her greatest fan, young Max, provide mutual support in the course of another busy year. For her, it’s one of writing and promotional traveling and for him, one of struggling with a trollish babysitter and a firming relationship between his widowed mother and a new friend. It’s an exciting time for Lucas, whose My Teacher’s a Nutcase is being made into a film (starring “Tom Trews” and “Jennifer Aniseed”) even as she’s trying her hand at creating a higher-toned novel. Meanwhile, Max deals with his unhappiness partly by concealing it from his mother, and partly by composing a play in which his sitter is an ogre and Mom’s bearded, deceptively friendly caller is dubbed Fungus Face. Including playwriting tips and brief passages of dialogue along with savvy advice and loyal expressions of encouragement, the epistolary back-and-forth, liberally strewn with Max’s line drawings, creates two equally engaging storylines—and may get the creative juices flowing in some young readers, too. (Fiction. 8-10)