"Clementine" by Sara Pennypacker

I liked this book before I even saw it, because anyone with the real-life name of Pennypacker has to be awesome, otherwise he or she would have crumbled under its awesome weight.

Clementine is a fictional first-person narrative told by the precocious titular character, a spunky little third-grader who can never seem to pay attention to the right things.  She's the archetypal "problem child" character with good intentions and curiosities that always seem to be landing her in trouble with her parents and teachers.  When Clementine finds her classmate, neighbor, and good friend Margaret crying in the bathroom at school because of a bad haircut she gave herself, she responds by personally "improving" Margaret's haircut with rounded art scissors and permanent marker.  Margaret's mother, who is neat and tidy and who Clementine thinks looks like she just stepped out of a magazine, is not very happy with this.  This begins a chain of events, well-meant-but-poorly-thought-out decisions, and typically ignorant adult reactions that have Clementine thinking that her parents are planning to get rid of her.

One of the things I've had to learn about reading kids' books is that you can't get irritated if they are trite or hackneyed (which the plot of Clementine definitely is).  They aren't written for adults, obviously, they're written for kids who haven't had enough time to become familiar with dozens of literary versions of the creative, quirky kid who marches to the beat of her own drum.  So you have to put that out of your mind.  Then, when it creeps slowly back in, you have to put it out of your mind again.  And again and again, if necessary.

If you can keep that in mind, you'll like Clementine.  And, more importantly, kids will definitely like Clementine.  Pennypacker has given her a narrative voice that perfectly captures how little sense the world makes when you're young.  The behavior of adults is mystifying, consequences for well-intended actions seem wildly inappropriate, aesthetics of judgement seem subjective at best.  Adults are just plain weird.

There are also really great illustrations:

In summation, Clementine is great if you're not looking for any kind of plot tension at all.  It's a funny book with sympathetic characters that is enjoyable to read, and you can polish it off in a half hour if you really sit down and try.