Danny's Doodles: The Jelly Bean Experiment (Danny's Doodles, 1)

A cute story about being the new kid in town & school. Trying to make friends through jelly bean experiment, which I like his second idea better! I like the moral, that even if you are a little different, there’s a place for everyone!

7 year old boy loves this book!

The boys in my fifth grade classroom are drawn to this story and subject matter particularly. Part graphic novel, part chapter book, readers who are just coming into some independent success will be motivated by this fun story. Danny is a great character with lots of charm!

We liked the story and the message, although I thought the ending chapter felt out of place. This was our first Danny's Doodles book, we look forward to reading more!

Hope my grandson will enjoy this one! It dealt with kids who don't fit in school settings which I found delightful even if silly!

Didn't read it myself...bought as a Christmas gift

David Adler is the author of the Cam Jansen mysteries, which is a very popular series featuring a kid sleuth with a photographic memory. Those books are fine as basic introductory mysteries, but the characters and plots are very thin. The Danny's Doodles books, starting with this one, offer an entirely different experience and, to me, mark a major step up in class, style and substance by the author.All of the kid characters are fourth grade classmates. The target readership, at least according to the publisher, is grades one through three, which sounds right, but shouldn't discourage older kids from reading the books. Usually, for this audience, we get zany and antic plots and we get bigger than life heroes and heroines who have a knack for messing up and/or creating chaos. I can think of a dozen such characters right off the top of my head. This book delivers more.Danny is the narrator; Calvin is the "weird" loner; Annie is a slightly bossy classmate with a mild sneaker for Danny; Douglas is a classmate who just ignores Calvin because he's weird. Each of these kids confounds your expectations by being decent, generous, understanding, honest and kind every time there is an opportunity for the usual fictional angst or smartmouth or meanness. They are anti-fictional; they are real-real.Danny is more patient with Calvin than you expect. Annie and Douglas are more opening to getting to know and like Calvin than you expect. Calvin is smarter, funnier, wiser, sadder and more socially attuned than you expect. Just when you think someone is going to get annoyed, they display understanding. Just when you expect anger you get forgiveness. Just when you expect childish drama you get restraint and perspective.The action here is small. PLOT SPOILER ALERT. Calvin does an experiment to see if people treat Danny differently when he smells of jelly beans. The kids work as partners on a school report. Calvin helps the baseball team by reading the opposing pitcher's body language. The kids overlook Calvin's oddly touching fiction about where his father is. Everyone is bemused by Calvin's eccentric mother.The writing is neither drippy nor cute. The dialogue says more than the people speaking realize. Danny's musing are not self-conscious and are almost age appropriate, but again, they tell us more than Danny realizes. There is a lot going on in this slim volume and it's all good. This is quality writing.Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book in exchange for a candid review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.

I could not resist when offered a chance to review David A. Adler's new book.For those of you who don't recognize his name, he's written a metric ton of books for kids. Most importantly for me, he wrote the Cam Jansen series. The Cam Jansen mysteries were basically one of two series I read when I was learning to read. I can remember checking them out of the library, one by one, figuring the words out and trying to solve the mystery along with Cam of the photographic memory. (I feel like Cam Jansen led me straight to Nancy Drew, which is obviously a terrific reading path to take.)DANNY'S DOODLES: THE JELLY BEAN EXPERIMENT is the start of a new series, and I suspect another generation of kids will grow up reading books by Adler. THE JELLY BEAN EXPERIMENT is presented as Danny's journal, an informal record of his day-to-day doings. Currently, Danny is being roped into an experiment by Calvin Waffle, his class's strangest kid. I suspect most readers will easily identify with one of the two boys. (There are girl characters too!) The teacher is over-the-top mean, but in a funny way.I thought THE JELLY BEAN EXPERIMENT was a fun story. Obviously, the two boys are going to end up being friends. But it was nice to see how Danny went along with Calvin's overtures, and then made his own efforts on behalf of Calvin in return. I also liked the experiment that brings the two boys together. It's obviously not great science, but it's the kind of crazy experiment I can see my niece coming up with. And it's nice to see science portrayed as something fun, interesting, and mysterious.The titular doodles are drawn by Adler, and they add a nice element to the story. There are details from the text, and there are also totally irrelevant scribblings. They aren't overly sophisticated or on point, which adds a nice bit of verisimilitude. At the same time, they aren't so simple as to be unengaging. (And often, they're quite funny.)I intend to give my copy of THE JELLY BEAN EXPERIMENT to my niece next year, when she's reading on her own. I think she'll enjoy it -- I just hope she won't start stuffing her khakis with jelly beans!