The Pizza Gang
Facing the Witch
Maureen Hume
Eloquent Books
ISBN: 978-1-60860-337-4
78 pages (Includes front and back matter)
As I read The Pizza Gang by Maureen Hume, I
was impressed with how quickly the author gives the main characters
unique personalities through her description and dialogue. Ten-year-old
Katie, along with Ben and Joe, all loved pizza and adventure. The boys
were twins who looked alike except for their hair styles. All three of
them were sure that a Witch lived in their neighborhood. The elderly
woman was cranky, and it didn’t help that her cat ate a goldfish that
belonged to Katie. Rumors and frightening stories about her were the
talk of neighborhood kids.
It didn’t take long for the new policewoman in town
to learn that these three kids liked pizza. When Katie, Ben, and Joe
went to the police station to meet Dullsville’s newest police officer,
they had expected to see a man; instead they met a young woman named
Pamela. She was very friendly and, after showing off her police badge
and other gear, she took them up on their offer to help by suggesting
they clean out the lost property room. This was after Joe had bragged
about Katie helping a friend find her white mouse by following the poop
trail; however, he wasn’t very enthused about cleaning out the lost
property room until Pamela mentioned that she would share a pizza with
them afterward. Ben loved pizza; they all did so the three of them
quickly went to the room and began working. The pizza would help make up
for an incident that had happened earlier in the day when they had a
frightening confrontation with the Witch after they accidently damaged
her lavender bush. Fearing for their lives, they agreed to be at her
house the next afternoon and do some work to pay for the damages.
The plot thickens when the children discover a hat
and a romantic letter written from the battlefield in the property
room—for some reason this package had never reached its intended
destination. The three of them decide to try to find the woman who
should have received the letter and hat. But it would take some doing
and involve some very colorful characters, especially the Major who
lived at the Dullsville Nursing home. With his help, and after a
comical mishap at the local library, they enlist some would-be actors
and actresses and devise a scheme to unravel the “hat in the box”
mystery. Things didn’t exactly go as planned, and I found myself
laughing out loud at the sequence of events that clearly demonstrated
the creativity and skill of the author.
I’m sure that Katie, Ben and Joe agree that
chocolate cake followed by pizza provides a happy ending for this
children’s book; however, are they celebrating or being appeased by
others because of failed detective work? Did they have other
confrontations with the neighborhood Witch, and were they able to
deliver the hat to its rightful owner? This is a great children’s
book that I highly recommend. Follow this author as she is talented and
hopefully will be writing many more books.
Bettie
Corbin Tucker
For Independent Professional Book Reviewers
www.bookreviewers.org
October 20, 2009
