The Big Bad Lies

November 15, 2021
Rounds of truth or dare turn into real tests for fourth grade best friends trapped by their lies to one other. Having sworn themselves Best Buds Under Frogs in the 2018 series opener, Lily and Darby, founders and only members of the Rizzlerunk Club, both learn that it's easier to tell a "Big Bad Black Hole Lie" than to bear the weight of one on their consciences. First, when Darby's hilariously "inappropriate" drawing of Michelangelo's David comes to light, Lily is amazed and confused when her friend not only tells their teacher that Lily drew it, but refuses to admit otherwise, even in private. Then Lily inadvertently steps on a class rat that Darby brought home for the weekend and finds herself insisting that it died of natural causes--even after the whole class comes down on Darby as a "Rat Killer." The addition of a charismatic new student who bullies younger ones while compulsively boasting that he lives in the biggest house in town and telling other provable fibs turns Lily's narrative into a kind of seminar on different sorts of lies and their costs. But Patricelli keeps the tone light by adding cartoon line drawings to nearly every page and piling on subplots and incidents of a (mostly) comical tenor. And truth does win out over dare by the end, as does friendship. Most characters read as White. Will make readers both laugh and think...and what could be better than that? (Fiction. 7-10)

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