Karen's Leprechaun

Baby-Sitters Little Sister #59

by Ann M. Martin

Karen and Andrew are going to be in the St. Patrick's Day parade. The parade director is a funny little man dressed all in green. He tells Karen he is a leprechaun.Karen is not sure if she should believe the leprechaun. But Karen loves his tales about rainbows and pots of gold. Could the leprechaun stories be big trouble for Karen?

Genres: Childrens, Middle Grade

74 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Ann Matthews Martin was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane. After graduating from Smith College, Ann became a teacher and then an editor of children's books. She's now a full-time writer.

Ann gets the ideas for her books from many different places. Some are based on personal experiences, while others are based on childhood memories and feelings. Many are written about contemporary problems or events. All of Ann's characters, even the members of the Baby-sitters Club, are made up. But many of her characters are based on real people. Sometimes Ann names her characters after people she knows, and other times she simply chooses names that she likes.

Ann has always enjoyed writing. Even before she was old enough to write, she would dictate stories to her mother to write down for her. Some of her favorite authors at that time were Lewis Carroll, P. L. Travers, Hugh Lofting, Astrid Lindgren, and Roald Dahl. They inspired her to become a writer herself.

Since ending the BSC series in 2000, Ann’s writing has concentrated on single novels, many of which are set in the 1960s.

After living in New York City for many years, Ann moved to the Hudson Valley in upstate New York where she now lives with her dog, Sadie, and her cats, Gussie, Willy and Woody. Her hobbies are reading, sewing, and needlework. Her favorite thing to do is to make clothes for children.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/annmma...

Reviews

[Pastel Paperback · Rating 3 out of 5]

A blip of a holiday book.

The majority of the plot revolves around a lost dog that Karen and Andrew try to take in, but he doesn't get along with their other pets.

The supposed a-plot (but is regulated to almost nothing) is Karen being in the St. Patrick's Day parade and believing that one of the organizers is a real-life leprechaun.

[Luna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Karen manages to keep her developing hallucinations and delusions under check in this book. A creepy man tries to con a bunch of kids into thinking he's a leprechaun. Karen is skeptical at first, but then falls into his trickery and tries to follow a rainbow. Of course, Karen gets in trouble.

In the meanwhile, a young dog is lured into her household. He is then given to the creepy man after he tries to bribe Karen's young nubile body with a necklace.

[Em's Adventures · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hate that this sends the message that you should just give up on your dog when things get tough. For a moment I thought that the parents were going to explore different options of training, of finding ways to work through the problems, but they just said let's get rid of him. It made me so mad.
Sometimes there is no other option then to re-home an animal and that is okay but ... Okay enough of that, bee in my bonnet 😂
Otherwise this is a cute and fun book.

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cute story. TBH, I think Seth and Karen's Mommy (Lisa?) could have done a better job at trying to integrate new doggy Lucky into their home. Of course it'll be an adjustment for current furbabies Rocky and Midgie, but totally not insurmountable. Still, all's well that ends well, and I'm glad Lucky the doggy found his furever home with Mr O'Connell the (pretend) leprechaun. The St Patrick's Day parade and leprechaun a-plot was fun, and awww on Karen legit trying to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! Even though it got her into trouble coz she ended up biking all the way into the woods near the big house, and she's only supposed to bike within a five block radius.

[Allison Jones]

“I’m not lonely anymore”?!? Out of all things to put at the end of the book, my cold dead heart is quite literally sobbing. That’s so sweet and I’m glad that Lucky found a human who is very lucky to have him as a pet! Now, I’m gonna go sob for a little bit longer.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

So precious. Karen finds a dog on her front porch but can’t track down the owner. She and her little brother Andrew are invited to be in a St. Patrick’s Day parade. B+

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lol I have nothing to say about this one.

[Sarah Lu · Rating 1 out of 5]

This story just seems rather silly and unnecessary. Even at 7 years old, Karen should know that Leprechaun's are not real. I knew it from the get go. Maybe it was because of watching Darby O'Gill and the Little people and all of those Lucky Charms commercials growing up. It just didn't seem realistic and I think that throughout the whole thing, at about 7 or 8 years old, I was just yelling at Karen "What is wrong with you?!"

[Melenia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved these books as a child