Jennifer L. Holm’s The Third Mushroom is a funny, tender story for 9 year olds about a girl whose grandfather is back, and still looks like a teenager.<\/p>\n
Ellie comes home from school to a smashed back door and a half-eaten box of burritos. She’s on the phone to the emergency services when the toilet flushes. Out walks a boy with a ponytail, loafers and black socks, asking for the plunger. It’s Grandpa Melvin.<\/p>\n
Melvin is seventy-seven, a scientist with two PhDs, and he’s found a way to make himself young again. He’s been travelling for a year and he’s come home with a mountain of dirty laundry. He’s also a bossy, starving, very grumpy thirteen-ish boy who has to go back to school as Ellie’s “cousin”. (He’s furious they’ve made him repeat eighth grade.)<\/p>\n
So Ellie has an idea. They’ll enter the science fair for the whole county together. Their experiment involves a mysterious frozen creature from the Philippines with six legs, a lot of fruit flies and a banana mush that Ellie admits tastes a bit like pudding.<\/p>\n
It’s laugh-out-loud funny. Melvin blames everything on “the Puberty” and takes the dishwasher apart because he has two PhDs and can surely fix it. Melvin and Ellie’s theatre-teacher mum bicker like a pair of teenagers. It’s a family full of big personalities, and they’re lovely company.<\/p>\n
But it’s also very gentle about big things. Melvin’s blog is full of flower photos with little notes, and one of them just says “I see you everywhere”. Ellie has a best friend, Raj, who she might be starting to like a bit more than that. And the family cat has a rough patch later on, which is worth knowing for a pet-lover.<\/p>\n
If your reader is into science, this is a treat. Melvin talks about penicillin, the Herschels and why drawing makes you notice things, and none of it feels like a lesson.<\/p>\n
If they haven’t met Melvin yet, The Fourteenth Goldfish is where he first turns up on Ellie’s doorstep looking about thirteen and telling her mum to put the bins out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jennifer L. Holm’s The Third Mushroom is a funny, tender story for 9 year olds about a girl whose grandfather is back, and still looks like a teenager. Ellie comes home from school to a smashed back door and a half-eaten box of burritos. She’s on the phone to the emergency services when the toilet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10795,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9052,"lr_next_read_anchor":"The Fourteenth Goldfish","lr_seo_hook":"A grandad who looks like a teenager becomes Ellie's science fair partner."},"book_tag":[1046],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[456],"class_list":["post-9468","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-sci-fi-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-jennifer-l-holm"],"yoast_title":"The Third Mushroom by Jennifer L. Holm | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A grandad who looks like a teenager becomes Ellie's science fair partner. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n