Freckleface Strawberry

October 8, 2007
Actress Moore's first book for children introduces a girl “who was just like everybody else except for one thing,” which turns out to be two things: she has red hair and “something worse”—freckles. The child finds herself dubbed Freckleface Strawberry, and her peers annoy her with inane remarks: “If you got more freckles, you would be one big freckle, and that would be a tan” and “Can I smell them?” Predictably, she attempts to eradicate her freckles (she tries scrubbing, dousing them with lemon juice and drawing on herself with markers). When nothing works, she resorts to wearing a ski mask, whereupon her friends wonder aloud where she has gone. When she finally removes the hot, itchy mask, the gang announces that they've missed her, prompting her to “smile so wide, she thought she would crack open” and to conclude, “Who cared about having a million freckles when she had a million friends?” In Pham's (Big Sister, Little Sister
) homely cartoons, rendered with a Japanese brush pen and digitally colored, the reddish spots covering the girl's face and arms look like a rash. With both the story and pictures presenting freckles as something of an affliction, freckle-faced readers are likely to wince. Ages 3-8.

August 15, 2011
In her third outing, Helen, aka Freckleface Strawberry, hangs out with best friend Patrick, whose unfortunate nickname is “Windy Pants.” They have a lot in common and enjoy many of the same things (street carts, books, and museums), but when their classmates challenge their boy-girl friendship, they pull away from each other. Pham’s illustrations have a compelling modern-retro aesthetic, and the story ends predictably with the misfits rekindling their friendship and understanding that they are different in some ways but “a lot alike too!” Ages 4–8.

November 9, 2015
In the third early reader featuring Moore’s redheaded heroine (following Backpacks! and Lunch, or What’s That?), Freckleface Strawberry is eager to lose her first loose tooth—so long as it happens at school, where the nurse will give her a tooth necklace like the ones her classmates have. Moore stages the action over four brief chapters, employing simple sentences and repeated phrases (“She did not want to lose it in her room. She did not want to lose it in the kitchen”). But while Freckleface’s eventual decision to take matters into her own hands provides a needed jolt of fun, the story and characters’ personalities feel quite muted. Ages 4–6. Author’s agent: Brenda Bowen, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. Illustrator’s agent: Linda Pratt, Wernick & Pratt Agency.