A Man With An Agenda

My absolute favorite of Ruth Chew's books, I must have checked this out a dozen times when I was little. Reading it as an adult is a very different experience, because not much happens. The children buy a Build-Anything Kit for cheap (the set is marked down because of a dent in the box) and discover that it is just as advertised.

That is the charm of Chew's books, she takes a simple idea and goes with it, enlarging on every child's fantasy - the bargain, the back-of-the-magazine advertisement, those weird toys and kits advertised between Saturday morning cartoons actually DELIVERING on their promise. It was a necessary antidote to the post-Sea Monkeys disillusionment I experienced after my sister convinced my parents to order them. As a kid I was caught up in the possibilities of my finding a Build-Anything Kit of my own and what I could do.

There are some odd things, like the brother and sister befriending a burglar they find in their house, after magically incapacitating him, but its a good story for the earliest readers post-Seuss.