Bad hair day

Gr 1--3--Adventurous, creative, and "mad" scientist Franny K. Stein first balks at her mother's suggestion that the fledgling inventor could improve her appearance by doing "kooky stuff" like dress nicely, fix her hair, and wear makeup. Then, industrious Franny sees an opportunity when she recalls that science is about exploring the unknown; and, what could be more perplexing than cosmetics? Franny and her canine lab assistant, Igor, get busy inventing new and improved beauty products like a bazooka that shoots makeup directly onto faces and shoes that grow long spiky heels. However, things get out of hand when Franny's miraculous hair-growing formula turns her regular pigtails into two out-of-control wild pigs made of purple hair! This zany tale will please readers familiar with Franny's antics. Black-and-white illustrations on every page enhance the silly story. VERDICT A tale of wild science packed with plenty of tongue-in-cheek puns that will earn a chuckle from emerging chapter book readers.--Tara Kehoe, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, Charlotte, NC

Another science experiment literally goes hair-raisingly wrong.Following a 10-year hiatus, Franny returns to whip up more mad science in her bedroom laboratory. Initially rejecting her mother's efforts to turn her on to hair spray and blow drying, Franny recalls that science is all about exploring the unknown ("Even if it's the really super-weird stuff that moms like") and so whips up a line of twisted beauty products. These include a Cosmetic Bazooka that blasts out whole, heavily made-up faces and "shoe polish" that turns high heels into really high heels. Eventually a version of the latter not only extends her pigtails to Rapunzel length, but brings them to lifewhereupon they snip themselves off and rush out to menace every barber shop, salon, and furry pet in town. Cue a seesaw struggle which Franny, with help from her canine assistant Igor, ends by temporarily immobilizing her errant locks with hair spray and then presenting her mom with a new "fur" coat. Franny's enthusiasm for hands-on experimentation, and the slightly menacing grimace she sports in many of the ink-and-wash cartoons that fill half or more of nearly every page, may add a certain raffish charm, but the quaint, not to say sexist, satiric tropes went stale long ago. Franny and her mom present white.A labored effort to revive a series that never was quite as clever as it tried to be. (Science fiction. 7-9) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Bad Hair Day CHAPTER ONE FRANNY'S HOUSE The Stein family lived in the pretty pink house with the lovely purple shutters down at the end of Daffodil Street. Everything about the house was bright and cheery. But, of course, the outside of a house is never as interesting as what's going on inside it. And inside this house, behind the little round upstairs window, something interesting was always going on, because this was the bedroom and laboratory of Franny K. Stein, Mad Scientist. Last week, for example, Franny developed a giant sea horse, and the day before that she worked on a way to fly based on how bats flap their wings. Those projects became pretty expensive, so Franny needed to get a piggy bank to save her money in. Of course, being a mad scientist, she created her piggy bank from a real live pig, which meant that she had to learn all she could about pigs. This got pretty messy, but she didn't mind getting messy, because that's just what happens when you're doing mad science. Excerpted from Bad Hair Day by Jim Benton All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.