Muggie Maggie

Beverly Cleary's Muggie Maggie is a short school story for 8 year olds about a girl who decides she is not going to learn joined-up writing and then cannot find a way back down.

What happens

Maggie Schultz starts the third grade in a perfectly good mood. Her teacher seems nice. Her dog Kisser is waiting at the bus stop. Then at dinner she announces that her class is starting cursive that week, and her parents laugh.

That is the whole spark. They laugh, she is embarrassed, and out of her mouth comes a thing she has not even thought until that second. All those loops and squiggles. She does not think she will do it.

Anyone who has watched a child dig in over something small will recognise every step of what follows. Her mother says of course you will, in that brisk cheerful voice, and it makes Maggie three times more contrary. Her father says just get busy and do what your teacher says, which makes it worse again.

By the time she is at school she has a position to defend in front of everybody.

Cleary is very good on the difference between what a child says and what a child actually wants. Maggie goes home and studies her mother's shopping list, and asks why the writing leans backwards. She tells her father he has not closed his loops properly. She has learned a thing or two in spite of herself and she would rather die than admit it.

One note for British readers. Cursive is joined-up writing, third grade is roughly Year 4, and the school details are American throughout. None of it gets in the way, and the nickname at the centre of the book comes from Maggie's own sloppy handwriting making her name look like Muggie. That is the sort of thing that stings at any school in any country.

There is no villain here and nothing frightening. The stakes are a nickname, a teacher's patience and a job as class messenger. It is one of those quiet books that a child who likes school stories will finish quickly and then want another of.

What to read next

If you have a reader who enjoys being inside an argument like this one, Mitch and Amy is by the same author and full of them. Twins, one who reads easily and one who does not, a home-made skateboard and a pair of older boys who make the walk to school a problem.