Peachaloo in Bloom [Hardcover]

Waiting for Guffman meets Parks and Recreation for middle grade readers, in this one-of-a-kind illustrated novel from Caldecott Medalist Chris Raschka, where a wasp sting grants Peachaloo a useful new superpower.

Two very large things have just happened to Peachaloo Piccolozampa. First, she’s discovered a plot to ruin her favorite swimming hole and replace it with a golf course. Second, a wasp sting has given her the superpower to understand the truth behind what people say. 

Peachaloo knows a golf course is not the destiny for the grounds of the Ajax Mansion, a former monastery whose jump-roping denizens proclaimed it freely open to all. But the mansion’s new owner has other ideas—and has managed to bury the evidence of the Brothers and Sisters’ wishes. Now it’s up to Peachaloo to use her superpower to prove this villain a liar, star in the annual pageant, and somehow get her town back the way it's supposed to be.

Caldecott Medalist Chris Raschka proves as deft with pen as paintbrush in this sizzlingly witty tale of Extraordinary Wasp Perception, oyster-slinging bank robbers, and a community standing strong against the forces of greed and real estate. Illustrations sprinkled throughout paint a small town entirely unique and yet all too familiar to readers across the U.S. Readers of all ages won’t want to miss the next train to the big-hearted, peculiar, one-of-a-kind town of Fourwords.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard SelectionRaschka’s prose is charming, written in a rural deadpan reminiscent of KateDiCamillo, and the accompanying drawings are comical and oddball, like many of the novel’s eccentric characters.
—The New York Times

Raschka draws on his inner teen and grown-up as well aslóx