Just Grace Gets Crafty (The Just Grace Series, 12) Paperback – September 22, 2015

My avid second grade reader loves the Just Grace series. She's read the Katie Kazoo series and Ivy and Bean, but this is a series she's keeps going back to. Difficult to find in the book stores, I'm happy Amazon offers so many titles.

This is a good book with plenty of adventure and fun. Just Grace has done it again. I love it

This series is great! My daughter loves the books and they teach subtle lessons. We have all of the series so far!

I just love this book series! This book was another great one! I hope that another one comes out. PS I like reading these beacause my name is grace, to!

Great early chapter book for young readers.

I do not need t w e n t y. W o r d s but I love the book

Purchases for my 8 year old grand daughter for Christmas, and she loved it !

I've read and enjoyed every single one of the Just Grace books. You'd think the concept would get stale after a while, but this one doesn't. Harper does an excellent job of finding new, authentic areas of the psyche of a nine-year-old third grader. My daughter has grown up with these books too, and although she's now older than Grace, she still enjoys them immensely was well. I've found middle grade fiction to be a surprisingly rich genre, but Harper seems especially in tune with the way a child's mind works at this age, and Grace resonates as a very real, flawed, but lovable character. Some spoilers to follow.This time around, Grace's friend Mimi persuades her to band together and make things for a table at the craft fair. Lured by the promise of money to be made, Grace agrees, but finds out she's in for a bigger job than she'd anticipated. Meanwhile, a new crossing guard has moved to town, and she seems lonely, so Grace's empathy power leads her to try to contrive ways to find friends for her.One of the things that's consistently great about this series is the way the author portrays the trials and tribulations of elementary school without belitting them. I smile knowingly while reading about them, but all the while I know how monumental they are to Grace and how seriously she takes them, and the books take them very seriously as well. In this case, Grace's class gets a very fun substitute teacher while their regular teacher is away on a conference, and Grace is faced with a project that proves a creative challenge to her. I love how the book deals with Grace's feelings of envy about another student's talent, and how Grace has to challenge herself to come up with an interesting idea for her pocket pal. The book is a nice meditation on the challenges of thinking creatively.Grace's empathy power is another aspect of the series that I love. It's an excellent message for children without coming across as preachy. Finding friends for her new crossing guard isn't as easy as Grace imagines, and she finds herself becoming frustrated with the challenge, but then she arrives at an innovative, excellent solution. I loved the way Grace thought outside of the box and went out of her way to try to do something nice for another person. Even though the outcome isn't quite what Grace expected, she's able to see that things worked out well in the end, and that she did something that touched another person without that person even being aware of it. This book has such a nice message about the intrinsic rewards of generosity.There's also a great underlying theme about taking responsibility. Grace initially thinks making things for the craft fair will be all kinds of fun, but then she realizes how hard the work is, and how time-consuming. Still, she doesn't cut corners and does her best to use her talents to make nice things people will want to buy, and she ties this in with her larger plans for finding friends for her new crossing guard. I loved the description of her creativity and her hard work, and it was satisfying to see it pay off for her in the end.I'm hoping for and looking forward to the next installment of the series. These books are so funny and touching, and Harper has such a fantastic way of exploring how Grace navigates her world, learning in the process. This is, hands down, one of my favorite middle grade series and has been for a long time.