Enemy Pie

Book:  Enemy Pie (Book Link)

Author: Derek Munson (Author Link)
Illustrator: Tara Calahan King (Illustrator Link)
Publisher: Random House Publisher
Date of Publication: 2013
Genre: Picture Book, Diverse Protagonists
Lexile Score: AD550L
Citation: Ludwig, T. (2013). The Invisible Boy. NY: Random House Children's Books.

Summary:  In this story the main character who remains unnamed had a kid named Jeremy Ross move into the neighborhood.  Jeremy didn't invite the main character to his birthday party, but invited his best friend instead.  Therefore this made Jeremy Ross his number one enemy, and wanted nothing to do with him.  One day he was telling his dad about Jeremy and he recommended making him an Enemy Pie.  He wouldn't tell him the ingredients or what Enemy Pie did, but in order for it to work he would have to spend one whole day with Jeremy.  So the day came and he set out to spend the day with his enemy.  Throughout the day they did fun thing such as play boomerang, jump on the trampoline, and go in his tree house.  As the day came to the end the dad brought out the Enemy Pie for them to eat.  The main character quickly stopped Jeremy from eating it because he didn't want anything to happen to his new friend.  It turns out that Jeremy wasn't so bad after all, and they ended up having a great friendship after spending some time together. 

Audience:  I would say this book would be targeted at grades first through eighth.  The book does a really good job at displaying ways to deal with someone that you think is your enemy.  It goes about it in a very unique way that shows even though you think you don't want to be friends with someone you never really know until you spend some time with them.  Almost as a way of saying "Don't judge a book by it's cover" because you never really know someone until you take the the time.  This would be a good book to have all the way through those upper middle school grades because they still deal with those problems. 

Evaluation:  I would consider this to be a high quality picture book.  The author has a very strong focus on theme.  Throughout the entire story the author keeps making you think about what Enemy Pie could be used for.  In younger grades I think this would be a great tool to get them making predictions as to what they think is going to happen later in the story.  Since there are aspects of foreshadowing they might be able to suspect that the main character and Jeremy will become friends.  You can also sense the mood of the story change when suddenly the main character would care if Jeremy got poisoned by the pie.  In the beginning of the story the main character would not have cared, but as the story progressed there were serious changes in his character's traits.

Activity: 
Compare & Contract with Friends: For this activity they will work with a friend and compare their two stories.  They will be provided with a sheet that has a Venn Diagram on it, and place their name on one circle, and their friends on another.  Then as they discuss their books together they will find similarities and differences.