Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Kara LaReau’s The Jolly Regina (The Unintentional Adventures of the Bland Sisters #1) is a delight for a plethora of reasons.  The dry humor, the vocabulary words at the beginning of each chapter (each of which is most properly used before the chapter is done), the puns (oh, the puns!), and the nod at the end to Melville’s Bartleby (which made me squirm in sheer delight)–they make for a lovely reading experience.  Jaundice and Kale Bland are a pair of sisters whose daily activities include mending socks, watching the grass grow, eating cheese sandwiches, and staring at the wallpaper; their kidnapping by an all-female band of pirates is quite the shock to their systems.  How they manage to come out on top in the end is a testament to inner resilience, sea shanties, and the usefulness of children’s dictionaries.  If you’re looking for the adventurous absurd–and who isn’t?–you really can’t miss this series, folks.  It’s the perfect antidote for the back-to-school blues.