Horrible Harry and the Mud Gremlins

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

When Harry comes to school wearing a necklace, the whole class is intrigued. Harry opens the necklace and reveals a mini-microscope&150perfect for looking at the mold experiment Room 3B is working on! Everyone wants to try it, so Harry promises to show them a kingdom of mushrooms at recess. But there is one catch. They will have to go outside the playground fence, which means breaking a school rule. If they follow Harry, will they ever be able to face Miss Mackle again?

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Booklist Review

Gr. 2^-4. This simple chapter book, fourteenth in the series about Horrible Harry, is one of the best, with a lively sense of the third-grade classroom and playground and with a true conflict that builds to a tense climax. Horrible Harry is wearing a necklace to school with a mini-microscope, and he tells his friends they can use it at recess to see a secret kingdom of mushrooms. But to do that, they have to break a school rule and go under the playground fence into the mud. Are they going to fib to their nice teacher? Should they own up? Using a light touch, Kline weaves in the characters' anger and remorse; she also makes science a fun part of the story, including some fascinating facts about horrible, slimy fungi, what they look like, and where to find them--in the mud and at the lunch table. --Hazel Rochman

Horn Book Review

Harry and his classmates sneak out of the playground at recess to examine some mushrooms, but their muddy footprints on the classroom carpet reveal their transgression. As in the previous simple, readable books about Harry and his third-grade adventures, Kline chooses one childlike concern and develops it into a story. This is standard fare for the series--predictable, lesson-oriented, and approachable. From HORN BOOK Fall 2003, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus Book Review

Harry and his friends in 3B are back in the 14th installment of Kline's lively Horrible Harry series. In this one, Harry is having friendship problems with Sidney La Fleur, a classmate who bugs Harry every day. The newest episode happens when Harry wears a necklace to school and Sid tries to get the other kids to tease him about wearing jewelry like a girl. Turns out, the necklace is a magnifying glass and Harry promises to show his friends something he has discovered with it: a kingdom of mushrooms. The catch is that the friends have to swear to secrecy because the kingdom, filled with stinkhorn mushrooms, is located off school property and is off-limits to them during recess. After some soul-searching, the kids decide to break the rule. When their teacher asks where the mud has come from following recess, Harry sneaks in a little fib: mud gremlins must have traipsed in the offending dirt. Sneaking off a few yards from the playground is one thing; lying to Miss Mackle is another. The children face the dilemma of telling the truth and getting in trouble, and they do the right thing in the end. Kline's gift is her ability to take the run-of-the-mill incidents in a young child's life and make them taut and believable, just as nerve-wracking as they are to real children. Another winner for the just-ready-for-chapter-books crowd. (Fiction. 7-10) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.