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Bink & Gollie: Two for One

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Bink & Gollie:  Two for One

by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee, illustrated by Tony Fucile
Candlewick, 2012. 80 pgs. Intermediate

     In Bink & Gollie's second adventure, the two girls go to the fair.  Bink pays her money and takes her chances at the Whack a Duck booth because she wants to win the world's largest doughnut.  Although Bink has a strong arm, she only manages, again and again, to whack the man who runs the Whack a Duck booth, right in the kisser. Failing to win the world's largest doughnut, she buys three bags of mini-doughnuts to share with Gollie and the Whack-a-Duck man who is now reduced to saying "Duck-a-Whack.  Step right up."  Gollie's dream is to enter the talent show, right after the pickle-juggler and the heavyset woman with her operatic cat.  Although Gollie has many talents she can't conjure up a one of them at the talent show and walks off stage humiliated. But the fair has not been a total disaster because although the fortune teller sees misfortunes in the girls' recent past, she affirms a future of friendship.  Who cares about anything else?  DiCamillo, McGhee, and Fucile have hit another one out of the park with this winsome tale of two of the best characters in beginning chapter book history.

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