Jaclyn Hyde by Annabeth Bondor-Stone

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jaclyn Hyde by Annabeth Bondor-Stone Kate Quealy-Gainer Bondor-Stone, Annabeth Jaclyn Hyde; written by Annabeth Bondor-Stone and Connor White. Harper, 2019 [240p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-267145-5 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-06-267147-9 $7.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 4-6 Usually the picture of perfection (straight As, team player, excellent baker, etc.), eighth-grader Jaclyn nearly falls to pieces when, in the matter of a few hours, she burns the cookies she was baking for a friend's birthday, accidentally covers her garage floor with lava from a science project gone awry, and loses her pet bunny, Charles. Her hunt for Charles leads her to Enfield Manor, the dilapidated mansion that is rumored to be the old lab of a mad scientist. There Jaclyn finds a formula for a "Perfection Potion," which she then concocts, but rather than returning her to her former flawlessness, the potion brings out the worst in her, transforming her into "Jackie," a monster that will do anything—including destroying other people's works and hurting her friends—to maintain Jaclyn's illusion of excellence. The dialogue has wit and charm, and there's genuine appeal in the quirkiness of the story, from a moose-obsessed teacher, to Jaclyn's clueless friend, to the over-the-top school musical about the small town's history. The message that perfection isn't everything is occasionally heavy handed, but the book also highlights the fact that Jaclyn's expectations of herself were compounded by those of others, who were so used to seeing her succeed that they didn't consider the pressure cooker they had put Jaclyn in and its inevitable explosion. Type A kids will sympathize with Jaclyn's need to be the best, but they may also get a wicked thrill from Jackie's rebellion [End Page 335] and want to look for Robert Louis Stevenson's original "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." KQG Copyright © 2019 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois