You can’t help but fall in love a little with the bookworm, with his bright eyes and shy smile, on the cover of Alice Kuipers and Bethanie Deeney Murguia’s Violet and Victor Write the Best-Ever Bookworm Book. Composed of collages made of bits of text, fanciful book illustrations and cartoonish children, this book intrigues even before reading it aloud.
Violet Small tries to get her twin, Victor, on board when she decides to write the best-ever book in the entire world. Victor resists getting involved—he’s too busy playing with his pet worms—but then mentions a book-eating monster, and Violet’s story is off and running. She meanders through all kinds of stories, searching for the terrible creature that is munching pages and ruining the library. Then Victor’s next suggestion scares Violet: “She hears a snuffling by her feet,” he says. But Violet doesn’t want a scary story. She thinks scary books are horrible.
Soon an extremely hungry bookworm appears between her feet. Is this the culprit? To save the library, Violet tucks the bookworm into her pocket and heads home. The twins debate what the bookworm should eat. Victor says worms, but Violet says words. When they decide, both are happy with their story and settle down to read it aloud, with Violet—the bossy one—doing the reading.
Billie B. Little is the Founding Director of Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, a hands-on museum in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
