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CM . . . . Volume XVI Number 41. . . .June 25, 2010. 
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I So Don’t Do Makeup.
Barrie Summy.
New York, NY: Delacorte Press (Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada), 2010.
271 pp., hardcover, $19.99.
ISBN 978-0-385-73788-3.
Subject Headings:
Ghosts-Fiction.
Mothers and daughters-Fiction.
Cosmetics-Fiction.
Mystery and detective stories.
Grades 5-8 / Ages 10-13.
Review by Tanya Boudreau.
***/4
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excerpt:
Josh and Nick take off to do something video-ish.
Junie and I race over to Naked Makeup.
“Amber told me you’re, like, a detective,” Lacey says to me.
“‘Cause of your mystery-solving experience,” Amber says, “with the rhinos when we were in San Diego.” She looks at Lacey. “Sherry even got her picture in the paper.”
Puffy with pride, I feel like the Pillsbury Doughboy. “Junie was majorly involved too.”
“Thanks, Sherry,” Junie says.
“I need your help.” Lacey’s face is serious. “Desperately.”
A mother in a wrinkled T-shirt and sweatpants pushes a stroller with her sleeping baby. She rolls up to the kiosk.
Lacey sucks in a breath. I’m sure she doesn’t want to spill in front of a customer.
It’s not easy solving crimes when you’re 13 and your every move is being monitored by ghosts. Luckily, Sherry can smell them coming and has a close connection to two of them - her mom and grandpa. Wearing carefully applied makeup and her cutest outfits, Sherry (aka Sherlock) Holmes Baldwin helps the Academy of Spirits keep the human population safe. She will see justice served, even if it means enduring multiple transports through the ‘portal of pain,’ going undercover to infiltrate the dreaded Janes clique at school, and searching for evidence in dumpsters that can lock unexpectedly.
Mystery, makeup tips, and love combine to create I So Don’t Do Makeup, the third book starring Sherry, the seventh grade sleuth. Set in Arizona, the storyline contains a fast paced whodunit plot containing vocabulary and text messages aimed at middle grade girls. Sherry’s investigative mind and big heart remain consistent in this book as she tries to figure out who’s responsible for ruining Naked Makeup’s reputation. The products that have been tampered with have caused pain and humiliation to numerous women in the town, as well as to Sherry and her best friends. There are many who have the motive and the opportunity to commit this crime, but, one by one, Sherry and her friends (boyfriend of two months included) will narrow the list down to one. Fairness is delved out in abundance by the end of the book, and Sherry is rewarded with thirty minutes of real time with her mom.
Recommended.
Tanya Boudreau is a librarian with the Cold Lake Public Library in Cold Lake, AB.
To comment on this title or this review, send mail to
cm@umanitoba.ca.
Copyright © the Manitoba Library Association. Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without permission.
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