The Misadventures of Salem Hyde: Book One: Spelling Trouble
Young witch Salem Hyde wants to win the spelling bee and be crowned the spelling queen, but when she accidentally turns the school’s crossing guard into a dinosaur, she know she needs help with her spells (and, coincidentally, her spelling). Enter Percival J. Whamsford III, a cat who has helped many witches over the past 800 years, and he still has five lives left. But Salem is a challenge: she flies on a vacuum cleaner, she’s impatient and impulsive, and she gets her spells just wrong enough to cause big havoc. For instance, when Salem casts a spell to win the school spelling bee, misspelled words come to life, turning the teacher whose “constant lecturing made him a bore” into a garbage-munching boar. Can Whammy help Salem put things back to normal before Mr. Fink gets her expelled? And can Salem learn to be a great witch after all? Young readers will eat up Cammuso’s (Otto’s Orange Day, 2008) action-packed panels, full of cartoonish antics, silly puns, and playful slapstick humor. Grades 3-5. --Kat Kan--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.