The tale of a science project gone terribly, hilariously wrong. For ages 4 and up. Students, heed this little rhyme: When it's science project time, Do not make goop, or glop, or grime, And never mess with mutant slime . Grade 1-3–A nameless girl needs an idea for her science project. Her solution is to go on the Internet, where she comes across Professor Swami's Super Slime–a mutant yeast with just a piece of dragon DNA. Of course, she orders it and doesn't follow the directions on the box: do not open until the science fair, then feed the slime sugar until it expands to 1000 times its size and watch it explode into a harmless cloud of gas. The child finds herself with a large, green, slimy glob that begins to grow and swallow those who are rude to it: her cat, which hisses; her dad, who complains of a smell; her third-grade teacher–Eeew! What is that big, digusting creature?–and so on. Finally the child remembers the sugar and, once kids have pelted the goo with sweets and sprayed it with soda, it explodes. My project didn't win first prize, and that was fair...I guess..../Miss Fidget kept me after school to clean up all the mess. The watercolor, colored pencil, and pastel illustrations are typical Gammell–the girl bears a striking resemblance to the boy in Liz Rosenberg's Monster Mama (Philomel, 1993; o.p.), round glasses and all; she's just perfect for this slightly wild story. This book could be used as a jumping-off point for science projects–a little levity always helps during the science-experiment season. –Susan Lissim, Dwight School, New York City Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. K-Gr. 3. The title and the cover, showing a blackboard coated in drippy, Technicolor goo, give away the ending of this boisterous story, but that won't deter kids from reveling in the silly, gory details, which begin when a third-grader can't think of a science-fair project. While her classmates put the finishing touches on wildly ambitious experiments (a moonworthy rocket ship, a cure for a disease), the girl frets. Finally she comes across an Internet solution: "Professor Swami's Super Slime." She places her order, but when the stuff arrives, she accidentally releases it. Taking on a menacing life of its own, it devours everything in its path. Sierra's rhyming couplets create humor from the horror, spurring on the slapstick with references to "moldy underwear" and other dependable crowd-pleasers. The laughs and suspense are wonderfully magnified by Gammell's skew-angled, paint-splotched illustrations, which explode with fantasy and the familiar, messy details of a child's world. An energetic, darkly comic spin on the common story of a science project gone wrong. Pair this with Michelle Knudsen's A Moldy Mystery (2006). Gillian Engberg Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "Edgar Allen Poe Meets 'Casey at the Bat" --Daniel Pinkwater on NPR's Morning Edition "Explosively funny!" --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Gammell's illustrations amplify the energy and fun of Sierra's bouncy verse" --Publishers Weekly Judy Sierra has been writing laugh-out-loud, read-aloud picture books for 25 years. She has worked with some of the cleverest illustrators, like Marc Brown, Melissa Sweet, J. Otto Siebold, Will Hillenbrand, and two-Caldecott Award winner Stephen Gammell.   Judy's books are for ages four to eight. They aim to stretch children's vocabularies, tickle their funnybones, and extol the virtues of kindness, perseverance, friendship, and the joys of a life filled with books.   "I try to create stories and rhymes that will entice children ages four to eight," she explains, "but I know that picture books are shared across generations. So I alwasy add a bit of sly humor and wordplay for adults. I'm especially pleased when an online reviewer says they don't mind reading my books again and again."   Judy Sierra lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband Bob and their library-card-carrying poodle, Keiko.